


Rightful

by goldenletters



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Drama, F/M, Jonerys Endgame, Post canon, Resurrection, boatbaby is a character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:48:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 89,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22156543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldenletters/pseuds/goldenletters
Summary: Twelve years later after the events in the fateful year 305 AC, Westeros has found a fragile balance between chaos and peace. However, the government of King Bran the Broken staggers at the rise of a wave of peasant uprisings.At the 317 AC meeting of the Great Council, King Bran reveals that Daenerys Targaryen is alive and they should bring the rightful heiress with them.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen
Comments: 289
Kudos: 276





	1. The Righful Heiress

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! well, first, this is my first fanfic lol my intention here is just getting this out of my head. This will be just about politics, drama, and romance really because I'm not a big fan of fantasy. 
> 
> In addition to that, if there is something I do not blame the negligents of D&D for, it is in not having been able to resolve the arcs that needed the backing of the books. That is why Bran here is not bad, it is simply ... Bran.
> 
> It is Jonerys endgame with a happy ending? Yes, you will notice this from the beginning. It's not Jon or Dany bashing, it's just logical that she will be reticent towards him at the very start. In this story, none of them will have other partners. 
> 
> There are things from the end of the eighth season that just don't make sense and I'm going to ignore to build this plot:  
> \- Sam doesn't become Grand Maester.  
> \- Bronn does not inherit Highgarden nor is he a Master of Coin (in my story that idiot died saving Jaime, where his arc should have ended)  
> \- The wildlings do not move to the true north but inhabit the abandoned castles of the Wall. Jon doesn't break his oath so he stays there.  
> \- Grey Worm does not march towards Naath but returns to Bay of Dragons where he eventually meets Daenerys again.  
> \- The fucking North is not independent. That was the biggest bullshit.  
> \- It is Jon who asks his family and friends not to mention his true identity in front of the great council.
> 
> And finally, I am not an anglophone nor do I have a degree in English grammar so any correction you want to provide will be welcome as long as you do it in the framework of respect. That is why the comments will be moderated. I don't really tolerate the negative and childish vibes that some people emit in other stories.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the annual meeting of the Great Council, King Bran the Broken announces something unexpected.

**I**

**The Rightful Heiress**

Ser Podrick Payne pushed the chair of the King until it is in the center of the arch that the great lords and ladies of Westeros formed for the annual meeting of the Great Council. From left to right, situated the Wardens of North, East, West, and South. They were separated by a couple of advisors and lords of lesser rank. All of them stood up to receive his majesty with respect, although it was not the predominant mood among those present.

Behind Podrick and the Kingsguard led by Ser Brienne of Tarth, entered crestfallen and with a suspicious look, Tyrion Lannister, the ill-famed Hand of the King, to who precedes the reputation of being the mind behind the constant predicaments of the continent, although occasionally his ideas converged in sporadic bliss and relief for the realm.

Tyrion was aware that his person was not well received, nothing different from what he was used to since he was Tywin Lannister's deformed son, always in the shadow of his father, his brother and now, of a bad reputation. He was lucky to still have a head above his shoulders.

He placed himself in the middle of the arch as that first meeting in the year 305 AC when he proposed the election of the monarch, an idea too early and not well-thought that had arisen in his mind since his days as hand of Daenerys Targaryen, a queen who would never leave offspring and that, initially, raised the motto of _breaking the wheel_ , although they never inquired what exactly that would mean for Westeros. From the saying to the fact, there was an abyss of misfortunes that ended in her tragic death at the hands of his lover and lost nephew, Jon Snow. 

Of all his failures, Daenerys was the one who still caused him nightmares to such an extent that he could not close his eyes without the help of the calming effects of one, or two glasses of wine. Still, her icy gaze haunted him in the innermost spaces of his mind, next to the image of Jaime and Cersei's bodies under the ruins of Red Keep. His punishment was to live what little life is left for him with those sins weighing on his back. And as an adherent, try to keep Westeros in reasonable peace.

First, the royal scribe proceeded to read the tables of the day, which consisted of some commercial agreements between local communities that had been unsuccessful after the constant assaults and blockades on the different routes. Lord Edmure Tully, Lord of the Riverlands, issues his first unfortunate comment of the day by suggesting that the crown should apply for a new credit with the Iron Bank for the creation of a commercial fleet like the one that thrives in the Free Cities since Bay of Dragons kept out of the slave trade and engaged in the sellsword's trade. Tyrion had to explain to the insistent Lord again that they didn't even have enough budget to finish building the royal navy fleet that had been proposed more than ten years ago. Ser Davos Seaworth, Master of Ships, second his explanation.

The Warden of the North and sister of the King, Lady Sansa Stark throws sharp comments towards Captain Yara Greyjoy for the clandestine trade between the Ironborn and the clans of the North. Thus, a myriad of points are made and he has to solve them in the most cordial way possible, while the King remains quiet and silent looking at him with wise eyes, occasionally distracted by some seasonal insect that falls on his lap and he watches carefully without disturbing him. Several hours pass, his head and legs begin to hurt when the last son of the Lord Eddard Stark decides to take the floor.

"Daenerys Targaryen is alive."

Dragon Pit subsumed in a bewildering silence at the declaration of the King of the Seven Kingdoms. Bran was not a man who enjoyed making jokes, even though he sometimes let out some uncomfortable comments without any tact or context. In the twelve years that they had ruled together, he had learned to respect his knowledge.

"I found Drogon. They are in Braavos," he continued, not realizing the stunned faces watching him. "You have to found her and bring _her_."

"What are you saying, Bran?" Sansa interrupted forgetting that she was not talking to her little brother, but to her King. "Sorry, your grace, what do you mean?" she corrected herself immediately.

Bran moved his gaze to Tyrion.

"I arranged a meeting between you and her in Braavos," he said, demanding and not suggesting, "you have to bring the rightful heiress."

_The Righful Heiress?_ Tyrion did not finish processing his previous words.

When the other voices rose in question, Tyrion lost the sense of space and time and had to sit on the steps of the rectangle. He felt an immense desire to puke and shit on himself. _How something like that is possible?_

"I spent years looking for him but I never could find him after his first envisage in Volantis, though I have my suspicions. I tried to communicate with the Order of the Red Temple but they rejected my approaches since then," Bran explains as if he were detailing some plan. "Some days ago something happened and I saw her. I saw them. All of them."

"Who are all of them?" Sansa inquired.

"She does not want to be founded," Bran ignores the question. "And she will try to run away if we delay."

"Delay, my King? She is a danger to the realm! We should send assassins!" Lord Baelor Hightower, Warden of the South recommended. 

"She is not more dangerous than each one of you with a dragon in your power," Bran replied with a monotone voice, "You have to find the rightful heiress and bring her," he reiterated.

Tyrion turned to look at him with a darkened stare that claimed why he had thrown such information in the middle of a meeting of the Great Council and not prepared him first to deal with the consequences later. Bran did not flinch at his annoyance and continued to see him with indifferent eyes, while the voices continued to discuss different solutions to the problem that unmeet what the king had demanded.

* * *

That same night, he and Tyrion locked themselves in the royal chamber to thoroughly discuss the matter. How did it happen? When? Why? All the answers, Bran dismissed by telling him there was no time and he had to get on a ship to Braavos before the assassination attempts force Daenerys to flee. He knew the Lords would not oblige his commands.

"I can still see _them_ ," he said, looking at the night sky, "I don't know for how long they let me."

_Who is allowing you?_ Tyrion wanted to ask before Sansa's thick voice interfered in the conversation to inquire what they would gain by bringing her back after the chaos she had caused in the past.

"The rightful heir is Jon!" she protested, but there were no more rightful heirs he would've added. 

"You will go and tell him," Bran responded to his sister, smiling. It was not an order but something he knew for certain she was planning to do. 

She stood still at the intrusion of the entity into her thoughts and continued to question him about the decision and ignoring what she was obviously going to do when she returned to the North.

  
Faced with the imminence of what seemed to be a final decision, Tyrion forgot about the formalities and demure and drank the wine directly from one of the jugs placed on the round table in the center of the room and begged for reality not to resemble the horror of his dreams.

* * *

He smiled when he saw Castle Black's great gates wide open for Sansa and his nephew and niece entering and meeting Sam, Gilly and the children in the main courtyard. It seemed strange to him that she had not informed that they would come, although Jon was accustomed to Sansa's taste for surprise visits. Since there was no longer Night's Watch, thanks to the pact between the Crown of the Seven Kingdoms and the Free Folk, Castle Black was a relatively pleasant and livable place for Sansa's children to visit from time to time.

About eight moons had passed since their last visit, and he could see that Eddard had grown to pass over little Sam, who had no tendency to be too tall. Not to mention his younger brother, little Jon.

Sansa's children had inherited their mother's height.

"Uncle Jon!" shouted Lya, the little girl with dark hair and gray eyes similar to Arya. "Uncle Jon, mother said I can also start using a sword!"

Jon looked at his sister who raised a funny eyebrow and rebuked her daughter, "I said you could learn to use one," then she turned to Jon, "It makes no sense to keep stopping her, nothing stopped Arya either."

Jon nodded as he hugged her and stroked the hair of the little girl who hugged his leg. This moment were the ones that gave his life some color in those days. Although the visits were sporadic, he made sure that the time was used to the maximum so that they always had him in mind as their family, just like they were children and always talked about Uncle Benjen.

The option to visit Winterfell was always at his disposal, but Jon had not crossed too far south of the wall since he was sentenced. For others it seemed stupid, almost no inmate had been trapped here since the Night's Watch was extinguished and the south no longer sent prisoners on these sides. He liked to explore the forests and visit those places that were previously unattainable with the threat of the White Walkers, but he made sure to always be aware that he was paying a sentence. He was not free even if it seemed so.

"Uncle Jon," Eddard, who already reached his shoulder, called him. "When are you going to let me use Longclaw?"

"First you will learn to shoot an arrow correctly," he replied, squeezing his shoulder, "Then we'll talk about a real sword."

Although the boy had a Master of Arms in Winterfell preparing him as a decent swordsman and worthy heir of Winterfell, the exaggerated stories told in the south about his exploits filled the child with illusion to one day becoming in something like a hero. It seemed ironic to Jon that all his childhood he dreamed of making a name and getting glory of some sort, something that a bastard was not allowed, and when he got all that, he simply didn't want it.

At least his nephew and niece, surely by Sansa's intervention, did not inquire into the part of his reputation that most marked him. An oathbreaker. A queenslayer.

He had many things to deal with Sansa, one of the four Wardens; some claims of the Free Folk that began to become more intense over time. However, he attended his family first.

Jon had no intention of becoming an intermediary between the inhabitants of the Wall and the rest of the continent, but having been part of both communities, and having direct contact with the authorities, inevitably led him to accept it. It was a quiet task that only demanded from him things which he had learned in his time as Lord Commander, without the part of decapitating disobedient and traitors. There were no more traitors than himself there.

* * *

"How is Bran?" It is the first thing he asks Sansa, sitting in the empty and dark hall that was once full of men from the Night's Watch. "News from Arya?"

Sansa swallowed hard and Jon feared hearing bad news.

"Bran, it's Bran. I never know if he's right or wrong, but it's still Bran," she took a sip of the tea Gilly had prepared; some strange mixture of forest herbs that were pleasing to the senses if the initial intensity was ignored. By the grimace that Sansa made, he realized that she had not succeeded. "Arya is alive, if that's what you mean, but the farther she is, the harder it is for Bran to locate her. That was the last thing he told me," and Jon didn't know if it was her nerves or what, but she kept drinking tea with disgust and lost eyes. "There is something we have to tell you."

_We_ , she said, and Jon frowned. There was no one else at that time.

Sansa unfolded a piece of parchment from inside her cloack, too big to be just a missive. Rather a letter. She extended it for him to read, and Jon obeyed the request.

He took a deep breath when a chill ran through his body that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room.

"I told you I don't want it," he declared. "I never asked for a Royal Pardon."

Many years ago both, she and Tyrion, had insisted on sending one of these for him to return south. He threw them into the fire until they stopped coming.

Sansa seemed imperturbable despite his reaction.

"Before I tell you what I'm going to tell you, I need you to answer honestly the following," she tells him, looking for her hand in the center of the table. "Are you still in love with her?"

Like other times when the matter was brought up, Jon stood up willing to leave the conversation. Sansa didn't allow it, holding him tighter from the arm.

"It is not your business to question those things," he spits fiercely; If there was anything he had become very good at, it was escaping those thoughts. Enough for his body to react immediately each time someone wanted to talk about it. "Let go of me, Sansa."

She released him closing her eyes and resting her hands on the table in a bewildered and defeated gesture.

"She is alive."

First she said it as a whisper that Jon barely distinguishes so she has to repeat it again.

"Daenerys is alive," she reiterated in a gloomy voice as if announcing that she would send him to the gallows for deserting. "Bran thinks she's alive. And he has sent Tyrion for her."

The space around him became small as if the walls were approaching to enclose him. He staggered until he involuntarily fell on one of the seats on the adjoining table, dropping his elbows on his thighs as he focused his gaze on the dark, filthy floor.

He supposed that he lost consciousness and someone took him to the tower that he made his bedchamber, because he lost the notion of what was happening as if his mind was doing the impossible to not allow the intrusion of that truth.

When he was awake, he had not fully regained his senses. He just remembered the face of Sam and Sansa urging him to speak, to say something. Jon pleased them with a scream that burned his lungs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before you complain this the same plot, well yes, it has its resemblances but here are some details that diverge from those other stories:  
> \- No Valyria restoration  
> \- No Empress Dany  
> \- Again, no evil Bran  
> \- For now, it's just Drogon  
> \- No BMF Dany.
> 
> This is just a simply story that will explore what could've been. I don't think that I will get too much got-type-of-cruelty here. There will be lots of conversations about the past and an intending restoration of the Targaryen dynasty, if you know what I mean.


	2. A Daughter of Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pushing the limits of your own luck

**II.**

**A Daughter of Storm**

She drew a malevolent smile on her face when she saw the deformed dwarf lowering the ship with the golden and black sail with the Raven symbol. Her suspicions were true.

She slipped between the roofs of the buildings of the joint houses and thanked that her little figure did not arouse suspicions of any kind. She knew each alley and passage as the lines of the palm of her hand.

The only thing that forced her to be careful was the bow and the basket of arrows she carried on her back, which made her more cautious when jumping. In a moment she slipped but could swing forward and hold herself up so as not to fall to the ground like when she was nine and broke her arm. If her mother discovered what she was doing, she would lock her back in a ship's cabin without telling her where they were going.

When she felt secure about her location and inspected that the city guard was not watching her, she prepared the bow and arrow to return the favor to the Lannister dwarf, once and for all. Her arrows were carved by herself so that no one could find out who did it, so she ruled out the possibility of bringing problems for her mother.

A part of her was anxious, it would be the first time she would end someone's life. It is not that in the future she will not do it in heaps, when she gets rid of the chains in which they are subjected thanks to those people who ruined her life, and have to deal with the attackers who pretend to instill terror for the mere fact of existing and being alive. This was justice and that she would say to herself that night when she finally became a murderer.

She was ready to do it when she heard the distinctive sound of the carriage of the Sealord of Braavos approaching, a friend of her mother who visited her long enough for her to have her rider's sound recorded in her memory when he rode the horses. She had to restrain herself for having lost her greatest opportunity, for the dwarf entered the building where, she supposed, they were going to meet to discuss about Westeros. She knew that, if it were plotting, the Sealord would have exposed them a long time ago, however, she remained still and hidden in her position to observe and, in the face of any strange movement, run in search of her mother.

The next thing she witnessed froze her blood: her mother's dark hair emerging from the carriage, dressed in the same turquoise gown with which she saw her that morning when she lied to her and told her that she would only be strolling the central market with a couple of friends.

" _Remember not to tell them your name, ever_ ," she warned her like so many other times in all the places they'd been. 

Why on earth did her mother, the person who didn't even allow herself to walk if first she saw twice on each side, would be meeting the damn Tyrion Lannister?

The urgency of knowing herself ignorant of such an event pushed her to go down, landing on the piled up wooden container in the alleyway and find a way to get into that building even if it was the last thing she did.

It was not an arduous task, since in Braavos one lived so securely with oneself that they did not even bother to place guards on the perimeter of government buildings, as they do in her home, where every corner was the perfect opportunity for a someone bold enough to open hee mother's or her throat with a knife.

She was sure, in fact, with this lack of security, that if she wanted to, she could even kill the Sealord. Good luck for him that she liked him.

It took her longer to wait for the guards who were stationed on the front facade of the building to be distracted, than to climb up through a window that, luckily and with prior assurance, gave way to an empty cellar, probably the kitchen depot.

She heard some murmurs, very distant and indistinct, that came from about two floors below. She could not have enough information from where she was so she took her own advice to shoot to kill, and opened the door to enter the next hallway. Again, she ran with the luck of not finding anyone there, however, this time she left behind her bow and arrows, hidden them between bags of some vegetables, and cut off the tip of one of them just to be prepared for any eventuality.

When she got to where the servants were working, she did her best to hide and being part of the environment and sneaking into the meeting room where she believed they might be gathered. A woman stopped her to give her orders, ignoring that she was a complete stranger, and she ended up getting lost in a parallel corridor that seemed to lead to another warehouse. It was there that she heard her mother's voice loud and clear.

  
"... There is nothing you can say that makes me change my mind."

She silently celebrated having found the perfect place to satisfy her curiosity. It was neither the first nor the last time that she transgressed the limits of private property. There was a kind of door that covered a secondary entrance to the room and she, with an excessive and unjustified distrust, leaned on to get a better take of what they were discussing.

  
"... and I swear, Tyrion, that if you dare to disturb me again, I will send you hanging from the bow of your ship."

  
Her mother's sentence was cut when the supposed door that was believed would hold her turned out to be of a weak, thin material, like a heavy cloth, that sent her directly to the floor of the room where her mother, the dwarf and the Sealord were gathered .

Suddenly she felt that several pikes of what would surely be the lances of the city guard or Grey Worm himself and the Unsullied, aiming at her. It was instinctive, something she had learned since she was nothing more than an outbreak of life in her mother's gut, resisting being left forgotten by the lethality of her father's blade.

  
"Muña!" she shouted to alert her, knowing she was there.

Immediately, she ordered,

"Keligon!"

And so there was no darkness or pikes digging into her ribs, but her mother's hands unwrapping the heavy blanket that was taking the air away from her body.

Her amethyst blue eyes that she envied not having inherited looked at her in horror, like all those other times where the message was clear: we have to run.

"You have to be fucking kidding me," she heard the dwarf's voice cursing.

She pushed herself out of her mother's arms, with the peak of arrow cut in hand, ready to end the life of the man that encouraged her father to kill her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll try to post two more chapters today and finish with the introduction. While writing this I realize that this will have a comedic tone in some extent and I don't know if you want angst, there's room for that sure, but I guess it'll depend. 
> 
> Next chapter:  
> \- Amends  
> \- Restoration


	3. Amends

**III.**

**Amends**

They look at each other for a long second before uttering a single word. In the last conversation they had, they both framed themselves for missing their word. He promised his loyalty and she had promised him not to become the queen of ashes. If they are fair, he broke his promise first.

"I had the slight suspicion that he was actually luring me to my death, and I think I was not mistaken."

She raises an eyebrow with curiosity.

"That is a good instinct," she replies. "It would have been good for me to have some of that caution."

He was more aged than one would expect from a man in his forties, his lifestyle was killing him, she supposed. Once she advised him that if he wanted to continue living after she conquered the seven kingdoms, he had to stop drinking. He did not stop, her conquest lasted less than the realization that had Jon killed her and the present was still disconcerting for both.

This was a battle already fought for her. Dany no longer felt the urge to inflict pain, emotional or physical, on those who had caused her so much harm. She would have liked it to be so, so it would be easy to order Grey Worm, who was next to her, to bring her the head of her worst enemy and she could rejoice. All her priorities focused on something else since the bundle of platinum curls and brown eyes was placed in her arms.

"I imagine that asking for forgiveness makes no sense at this point," he assumes correctly, and her lack of response is the confirmation. "Well, if I'm honest, during the time I was on the high seas, thinking why the King," he made a kind of thoughtful pause as if it were an offense to her to use that term, and rethinking his words, "why Bran would tell me to come to look for or how is that you are alive. I have many questions but I feel that none will make sense at the end of the day. Am I wrong? "

Dany swallowed hard, feeling the stab in her heart that was always present, as a reminder that she shouldn't trust people so fast anymore. As much as one loves them.

"Nobody wants things to change," she argues, "Nothing has to change. There are things that are better left in the shelter of silence and darkness because exposed to the wrong people can cause a lot of damage."

This time it was he who cast a suspicious look. She had made sure to emphasize the last part of his sentence.

"Do I have to take it as a threat?"

"Like an anecdote. A lesson learned."

He raised his hand to his ear in a gesture of discomfort, while she maintained her composure although inside she was dying to take all her things and get back on a ship that would take her and her daughter away, to a port that they still I have not disembark.

He peered between her, Torgo Nudho on her left and the Sealord on the right.

"I guess diplomacy is what keeps me alive?"

"My indifference," she contradicts him.

That causes in him a kind of sarcastic, short laugh. He is not accompanied by guards, sure of his own value. Or disvalue, who knows, many years have passed and it is not that she knew him well after all.

"I wonder if he will think the same," he wanders his eyes lost somewhere on the wall behind her. And Dany is so naive to first think that he refers to Bran, the Three-Eyed Raven.

"You are supposed to advise him against these things, but considering that you always seem to lead your monarchs the wrong way ..."

She doesn't finish formulating her sentence when Tyrion interrupted her.

"He already knows," his voice is too thick and appeases hers, so the room is silent. Torgo stirred by her side, preparing for any eventuality. "As you say, sometimes the information reaches the wrong person, or the right person according to Bran's judgment. Sansa knows it, so you can be sure that your nephew knows it too."

Her heart turns at the mention of that word. _Nephew_. It seemed to lower or give another meaning to what Jon Snow meant for her life. An ally, a friend, a lover, a lost relative, a better contender in her quest for the Iron Throne, her murderer and the sire of her daughter. She could also add, her daughter's murderer. There were too many things in the middle, to summarize their relationship with the word nephew because ironically, the blood separated them instead of joining them. 

"It doesn't matter," she replied, after a silence that left her too exposed. "It doesn't matter, Tyrion. I don't know what you came for, but whatever the reason, you can go through that door and pretend that this meeting never took place. Tell the lords of Westeros that I'm not interested in that filthy pit they call home and that they better stop sending their killers because Torgo is going to cut off their heads."

"His words, Bran I mean," he, again, cut her off, "were to bring the _rightful_ heiress back," he frowned as if he, himself wasn't comfortable with what's saying, "If he were in a position to kick me, I'd say he kicked me out of Red Keep to come to get you."

This time it was her turn to laugh sarcastically while crossing her hands behind her back. Under the surface of her alleged indifference, she understood the purpose of the Raven. Although the words she addressed were to him, she made sure that wherever that entity was, he also paid attention to her words.

"Do you believe me stupid, Tyrion?" she questioned him, "Do you think I'm the same idiot who twelve years ago was fooled by your cheap word? Do you think I don't know that minutes before our common acquaintance reached the throne room, wasn't he arguing with you? What's going on, Tyrion, your balls finally fall down and you will finish the job, or is he waiting in that beautiful ship, ready to make it more effective this time?"

Her comments obscured his gaze, and she would have liked to add: _with what right do you get upset?_

"You surrounded yourself with important people, I see," he snapped and she can't help rolling her eyes because of his failed subtlety. "We have had several trade conflicts with this side of the Narrow Sea. Perhaps even Bran cannot against the influences of power."

"Perhaps you chose wrong," she told him harshly, because of that she was sure, he chose the wrong side by supporting his whore sister until her last breath. "No matter for what the reason he sent you here, come back and tell him that there is no reason for me to return. If you want an heir, look for the dragonseed that the coward of your accomplice will have scattered wherever he is rotting. There is nothing you can say that makes me change my mind."

This time she loosened the tense grip of his hands behind his back to be in a firmer posture.

"I have moved on and worked very hard to get what I have. Not a name, not the fire of Drogon, but my knowledge and my dedication. The forces that I drew from the nothingness to which I have fallen so many times in my life, only to emerge more victorious from the ashes. Get out of my sight and if the aforementioned dares to even think that he has the right to approach, assure him that he will not find me. And I swear, Tyrion, that if you dare to disturb me again, I will send you hanging from the bow of your ship."

A dry knock against the marble floor of the room alerted everyone. Torgo took her by the arms and held her almost throwing her to the ground. It was not a projectile but someone who was spying behind the loom that hung on one of the walls. The unsullied who accompanied her surrounded the intruder, and aimed their spears at him. The person's choked scream baffled her, almost as if it were a familiar sound.

Then the shout of Muña!, that word she had heard daily for more than ten years, was enough for Daenerys to order her men to lower their spears while running desperate to reveal the person wrapped in the cloth.

Her daughter's pale and sharp face was replaced by a gesture of fear tainted in redness. They looked at each other in the understanding that they were in a dangerous situation until suddenly, the eleven-year-old girl escaped the grip of her arms and ran with something in her hand towards Tyrion, who had said something although she didn't pay attention.

The only thing Daenerys could say at that moment was,

"Serena, no!"


	4. Restoration

**IV.**

**Restoration**

It wasn't the pain or another mark on his face that bothered Tyrion but the girl that knocked him down as the reality of what he had done. An eleven-year-old infant whose death he caused. He deserved every nightmare that had visited him in the last decade.

"Thank you," he told Daenerys when she extended a change of clothing to replace the garments that his blood-stained. She responded with a curt nod, as she has come to calm her child. The offspring he believed she would never have.

He does not know if it is for simple courtesy or fatigue but at that moment they both decide to emulate the past and sit in front of the heat of the fireplace while they drink a glass of wine.

"Now," he is the first to break the silence, "I ask your forgiveness."

And he made no gesture of any kind for her to understand that he is being sincere. He would like to have the guts to show her how sorry he is, but any feeling of familiarity between them is only a memory now, and although it hurts him to admit it, her simple presence still causes him a kind of need to show her he is more than he actually is. 

Daenerys didn't look back at him, and her stare is centered on the flames in the fireplace while his mind is lost in some thought. As he said a few hours ago that same day, Tyrion has many questions to ask but much of his distress would leave if she answers something simple: was she ever dead? Did Jon let her run away? It would be a stupid situation, for she was determined to stay in Westeros that terrible day and, Tyrion does not believe that Jon is the type of man who only lets his pregnant lover leave so as not to return. Tyrion was not the best judge, so he saved making value judgments until he had all the answers on the table, if he ever got them.

"Serena," he pronounced the name of the girl who cut off his face a few moments ago. They barely knew each other and he was already marked by her forever. "A name..."

"Northern," she cuts him off, closing his idea. "I did not hide who she is, ever. Although she will always be more dragon than a wolf, she has the right to know that part of where she comes from."

Tyrion swallowed hard.

"Everything, huh? I'm an idiot if I suppose you sweetened at least part of the story?"

"Children are stronger than one thinks. When I was little Viserys told me that the Targaryen were the greatest thing that ever existed, that our fall was due to the betrayal of our enemies without mentioning our friends. He sweetened my ears with his stories but with time I had to open my eyes on my own to the truth: we are only people. "

Tyrion would have let out a snort of disbelief but it was not appropriate.

"All the truth?" he insisted, looking for her gaze.

Daenerys pursed her lips, looking at her hand in her lap.

"It wouldn't be fair to make him carry the weight of all the guilt as if he were one more traitor, right?" she sighed before taking a sip before continuing, "What hurts the most is that he wasn't just traitor. I'm afraid that although she knows the whole truth, from beginning to end, nothing makes it look prettier, mainly because she is also his victim."

"And your feelings on the issue have not influenced her perspective about it?" he wouldn't judge her if it were so. As she says, the betrayal of an enemy is to be expected. Of those who are not your enemies, the damage is irreparable.

Daenerys stirred a smile as if she were remembering something sweet and not discussing the moment of her death at the hands of her lover, urged by him.

"The damage that comes from those you care about erases everything they've done to you in the past, it's as if it didn't exist, as if the memories before all that had been erased, I try to reach them but I can't do it.

"I tried to do things right. I could have taken another path, a much more destructive one, and yet I had her from one side to the other promising her that one day we would stop. It's fear more than hate if I'm sincere, a dangerous fear because I have nothing left but her, my only and great treasure. No kingdom, no throne, no love is going to compare to having her in my arms. Then, even if I try to do my best there will always be a margin for that to resurface somehow. And yes, my feelings influenced more than you could imagine."

Tyrion could understand that kind of affection in the reminiscences of the past when his nephews, except Joffrey, saw him with adoration even when the rest of the world despised him. Unconditional love.

"Jon deserves to know," he said because it was something he no longer suppressed in his mind. He deserved the truth to live with the pain until the end of his day and Jon because he believed he was doing something right at the moment. And it was no right. Telling him this could led him to his final destruction but the notion of letting him ignorant also is unconvincing and gross. 

Daenerys was staring at him with menacing eyes, and he guesses, correctly, it's a sensitive matter still. 

"I almost take her to know him once," she admits, caught him off guard, "She is a very smart and awake girl, so I entrusted the decision in her hands. Do you know what she told me? that she felt nothing toward him. And that she preferred to feel nothing than to feel hate or fear for him," she lifts her hand to her left eye where a tear wanted to escape. "I know how it is now that I have her. There's no one that will come before her. If he hears the truth, tell him that she's fine and she's doing well. She does not hate him nor I speak ill of him to her. The past is the past, and we should try to move on."

"But he hasn't," Tyrion states, resting his right elbow on his knee. "He lives miserable with guilt. I don't think he can even," saying fuck was not correct in that context, so he chose to be lighter, "do things that regular living people do. Sansa has told me that he keeps true to his oath, he has taken no wide and father no children, well," he made a pause, looking at the hallway where the chamber of the girl is, "not that he knows about."

Dany opens her mouth to say something, surely a fierce opposition, but then she keeps quiet and continues looking towards the fire.

"The rightful heiress," he repeated Bran's words with the sweet taste of wine on his tongue. "You should bring the rightful heiress. Your daughter is the future Queen of the Seven Kingdoms."

In that instant, her gaze did become a true prelude to doom.

"My daughter is mine alone," she declared as when she used to talk about the Iron Throne. Tyrion supposed that she always wanted to possess something that inherently belonged to her. "Here some fools also wanted to take her away and to each one I made them pay the price of fire and blood. I have failed Rhaegal and Viserion, but no one will hurt Drogon and Serena. And for that I have to keep moving, I can't stop because now it turns out I am useful for you again. I am not intervening in the matters between Westeros and Essos. I helped Daario Naharis to establish the sellsword trade in Bay of Dragons, and eventually more people came to get my help to the point I transformed it into my livelihood. If you ever felt any affection for me, do not ask me to leave everything to fulfill the whim of some despicable Lord and put my children in danger again."

That's fair, he thought, leaning against the back of the chair. He wanted to keep inquiring about her passage, or rather saying, her return to Bay of Dragons, which Tyrion had left in the past because just thinking about those days stunned him. _On another occasion it will be_ , he trusted.

"And if I ask you in what terms are you with yourself about the incident?"

She closes her eyes again in a gesture of frustration as if the past were more present than ever. Her facial expression has not changed at all, although he can see some maturity in her person where before there seemed only to be audacity, arrogance, and security. Characters of any young person, and much more a young conqueror. 

"A terrible mistake an another reason to never return," she spoke, finishing her coup and standing. "I know you are intelligent enough to not try to do a stupid movement again, but still my men will keep an eye on you tonight."

"Dany," he has called her that way very few times. "What if it is actually a reason to return?"

She stared at him confused before turning around again and leaving. 

* * *

"Muña!" her daughter soft voice called her from the bow of the ship that brought them closer to the shores of King's Landing. "It's Red Keep!"

Dany smiled at her but felt her gust twisted and nerves emerging in itchy skin. In her youth, she endorsed this place so much only to discover that it was not much better than a rathole. All the places felt wrong until Serena came into her life, and then any place felt right as long as she was by her side.

As soon as the option was on the table, her duty as a mother forced her to tell her what was happening with Tyrion. She never intended for Serena to bear the responsibility of continuing the Targaryen's legacy but throughout her life together, Dany has taught her enough about their House so it can be always be a part of Serena is. Not surprisingly, the mother ended up instilling a sense of duty in her daughter's head.

Daenerys made sure that at all times, Serena knew she was there just to negotiate with King Bran, and that the Unsullied would protect her at all times. She was aware that Bran barely had soldiers in his royal army, but she wouldn't be surprised to get off the boat and find an ambush made up of several other armies from the South and even the from North and beyond. In any case, the warning was clear: a false move and the sky shall fall upon them, again.

Dany looked one last time at Red Keep, completely restored. It didn't feel like home when she finally saw it, much less after she destroyed it and others fix it.

When they set foot on the mainland, the tension of an awkward silence fell on all of them. The only one who seemed satisfied with his interference was the Crow, who observed them both with something similar to admiration.

"Now I understand," he said with his voice always cold and monotonous. "It was always about the girl."

Dany tensed like Torgo beside him, and they covered Serena with their bodies.

"I won't give it to you," was the first thing he could think of saying, making clear what was non-negotiable.

"I'm not going to ask you," he replied in a slightly more relaxed tone. "I do not decide how things are. I just watch."

A wave of nausea ran through her body of only imagining the things he knew but did not speak, let one knows for what purpose. Tyrion told him on the way that he chose Bran as King because he does not want or lust anything from this life.

" _Then you chose someone who was always going to overlook all the faults of the Lords,"_ she had commented. And indeed, that happened. 

Bran Stark was aged as anyone of them as if being a powerful entity didn't affected him at all. He looked at Daenerys with indifferent eyes like the first time they met in Winterfell, all those years ago. His gaze lowered to Serena, and he scowled at the view of her before something like clarity had reached his mind.

"Welcome, home, princess," he greeted. 

* * *

**The Molten Throne**

_In memory of all whose lives paid the price of the Game of Thrones._

She made contact with the texture of the metallic inscription where those words were engraved. Deep inside her, there was a question: when did the wars end? This monument seemed to mark the end of something but Dany knew better than anyone that they had rushed to that conclusion. Beginning, end and a new beginning. She knew better than anyone.

This time the Unsullied situated on every corner and space of the restored throne room. Torgo was close to her, nervous and anxious because they were in the same place where he found her end.

Behind her, they opened the large gates she crossed just a few minutes earlier and it seemed to her that a memory of a distant day from a forgotten past echoed in her memory.

She heard the footsteps of her company become closer and raising the pressure in her chest, awakening in her the urge to flee.

"It's like one of those stories that one tells many times until the words become denizens of our minds. Each sentence acquires its own meaning and the meanings can evolve in something else from time to time, but the words will always be the same."

Daenerys decided not looking back this time; her eyes focused on the remaining structure that once stood up gloriously empty in front of her. 

His silence is thunderous, and she has learned not to waste a single second with awkward gaps. 

"Once you trust me with a secret that destroyed the foundations of my life..."

So, he decided to speak,

"I know I have no right to ask you for forgiveness, not even to stand in front of you. If you want to bring down the full weight of your justice, so be it. I could not forgive those who did the same to me."

Justice. Duty. Honor. Concepts that were the cornerstone of his existence. And she was careless not realizing that she let approaching a very dangerous opponent.

"It's time to accept that we are different, Jon Snow."

When she turned around, meeting her killer's face after so many years, Daenerys was not surprised to find him shedding tears. He was always a miserable man, although at first, she let other of his qualities blind her from that innate characteristic of his person.

"I must admit that it is not my decision but the opinion of our acquaintances, that you should know it. I wanted to be benevolent, leave things as they were. And it is also obvious that I must be the one to tell you. "

"Dany ..." he tried to appeal to her once more. And she hated to hear her name come from his mouth because she was trying to be cordial and he was returning them to a past not so affable to anyone. Only Viserys and he had called her that.

"There was a child in my belly when you stuck your knife in me," she intercepted any kind of statement he tried to make. Sometimes rawness is better than elaborate and careful words, he knew it better than anyone. "Save your tears, when I was brought back, she came back with me."

His palms fell on his knees in a defeated posture. A sound like a drowned groan escaped from his mouth.

A healthy distance separated them, one that she supposed should become unwavering from now on, with Torgo Nudho in the middle as it always should have been.

She can't help but assess his appearance, scruffy and careless as if he had come back from a long campaign. The part of her that cared about people even if she did not like them, wanted to tell him to pay more attention and care to his looks.

"Forgive me, forgive me," he cried, but Daenerys felt nothing, and only sighed.

"We cannot change anything with forgiveness and false words," all the words had also died with this throne, she thought, looking towards the inscription, "We only can learn."

"Does she know about me? about us? Does she hate me? Do you hate me?"

"Hating you?" she wondered, mostly to herself, "It's more like the sound of the wind in the summer evening by now. Appreciable but soft, almost like a distraction from the intense heat of our past."

And she is being honest because nothing else remains to be said. Of all the horrors she has committed, uttering false statements was not one of them.

"I never hid who she is, where she came from and what happened. I would never do to her what they did to us before; make her believe and live a lie."

He cast aside his gaze, his eyes on one of the restored windows on the side. Then she turned to climb the steps to where the molten throne was. For them, the words died and could never rise again like them.

"Will you let me meet her?"

She imitated his previous gesture and focused her gaze on the window in front of her, where there was once a star, in her vision, and later, a lion when she passed by with the fire pf Drogon. Now it was just stained glass.

Dany sighed exhaustedly.

"Go, meet her, Jon Snow."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to clarify from the beginning that in this story Daenerys is going to understand why Jon did what he did, but not the method in which he did it: luring her to a false sense of security. She will also regret what happened in KL.
> 
> I hate Tyrion in the show, but I want his character to be how D&D intended him to be. (But failed)


	5. Garden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon meets Serena.

**V.**

**Garden**

Jon felt dragged into the past the moment he walked behind Grey Worm to somewhere in Red Keep that is unknown to him. Not that he had known the building so well, he only remembered ruins, and being taken into a tower where he spent several weeks accepting the irreversible path he chose.

Seeing Dany again was worse than discovering she was alive. And what she confessed, could have killed him if he had been in another situation, perhaps so far from them as to feel so real.

He should be ashamed to have even suggested that he wanted to see his daughter. In the moon of journey to King's Landing, Jon had the certainty that he would find the perpetual punishment of his acts here, but what he stubled upon on was even worse.

Queenslayer, oathbraker, kinslayer of his aunt and of his own child. He'd became in the epitome of dishonour and shame, but beyond that, he could've had a family and he spurned them with betrayal and murder. He could never forgive himself, but if they give him the chance, though Jon knows they will not, he'd like to try to win them back. 

How absurd of him to expect something like that.

They arrived at a private wing where there were even more Unsullied guarding the way. Jon felt pleased that apparently, they were safe enough, but on the other hand, he understood that left him farther from them.

"A false move and I cut your throat," Grey Worm snarled at him, before making him pass through a wooden door that led to a kind of internal garden.

Jon watched him while passing by, asking with his eye what kind of relationship he has with the girls. Has he raised his child in his stead? Is he who she called her father? Is he with Dany in more the way he's imagining?

 _You should have cut my throat before_ , Jon would like to answer to him as he passed the threshold of the door.

He heard the soft splash of water from the fountains but there was no one waiting for him, there was no ten and one years old girl waiting to meet her killer who turned out to be also her father. Had he known this outcome, he should've brought something for her. A toy, mayhaps. He's done several of those for Sansa's children. 

He moves his hands to his sides nervously; A gesture that he has not lost over the years. Jon advances in search of his lost and now found blood, but only finds emptiness.

When he listen to the characteristic sound of the tension of a bowstring stretched, Jon turns around in the direction of it to find an infant holding the weapon against him.

There have been occasions that he has neglected so much of himself that he forgot his own face. Seeing his daughter reminded him of his past version or what he thinks he should have been, although there was also something of Daenerys in her, in the way her gaze turned dark and menacing.

"I always wanted our first meeting to be like this, me, ready to loose an arrow straight into your heart," she speaks and her voice is marked by the Essosi accent he has heard from the traders in White Harbor. It was more marked than Daenerys' one. "After all, last time you held a knife against me."

Jon fell silent with shame and regret.

"I should aim at your head to be more effective, my mother told me that you also survived a stab in the heart," she said, reputing the bow up, "I would like to investigate the mystery of why you did the same to her that they did to you. But I fear your answer is as simple as a greater good."

All the hardness he expected from Dany Jon found in his daughter. He'd wished the earth to devour him right there.

"You should do it, yes," he replied, focusing on her gaze, increasingly similar to Daenerys's when he first met her. "If you don't do it, your mother or Grey Worm should do it."

The girl's face twists into a smile that left Jon even more surprised.

"I bet Torgo that your first words to me would be _sorry_ , but I think I lost," she confessed, lowering the bow and placing her hands on the hilt of a knife that he hadn't realized was there. Jon was horrified that it was the dagger with which he had killed Daenerys.

She noticed his reaction.

"Out of precautionary considerations," she explained, "and justice if we get to that point, Jon Snow."

She talked like someone older, more vivacious than little Lya, only a couple of years younger than her. Jon still didn't know what day she was born and that made him grown desperate.

"You deserve more than my regret," Jon begins to say, trying to move towards her but stopping as soon as she recoils escaping from him. _What else did he expect?_

"I'm not afraid of you, but I'm not an idiot either. I'm in the same place where you killed my mother."

"No-" his words trailed off, "I don't want you to fear me. I would never hurt you."

"Of course you will have said the same to her."

She had enough reason to doubt his word, and Jon no reason to help him look more sympathetic to her eyes.

"Your mother caused great harm and was willing to continue with more, but I swear to you that I had known you were there," Jon didn't understand why he had to say those things, because unlike her, he didn't have time to prepare that meeting.

"You're not improving it," she mocked him, "My mother is my everything, you know? Cousin," He shivered a little when he heard that word come out of her mouth. Jon hadn't even thought they were cousins too. "You still feel disgusted by us?"

When Dany mentioned that she has not hidden anything about who she is, he did not stop to think about the extent of her words. Jon wanted to know what else the girl knew, which so far seemed to know everything.

"Of course not," he said with the provided certainty of years of solitary reflection.

"Good," she used a lighter tone that could have given him hope if it wasn't because she was putting more distance between them, heading towards the entrance. "I prefer that term among us. Cousins. It's easier to see you that way."

How was that possible? Jon wanted to protest. 

"Your brother, the cripple king wants me to be queen one day. That's why they brought me here, not to play family with you."

Again, Jon felt helpless watching things slip out of his control. As much as he understood that he didn't deserve it, he wasn't willing to see her leave so soon and without having had a real conversation.

He was so engrossed with his own grief that he hadn't even asked his daughter's name.

"I know I have no right but I really want to meet you. At least, let me know your name."

"Serena Targaryen," she responds solemnly and sure, "maybe another time."

Jon tried to follow her but at the moment when the doors closed, someone on the other side prevented him from opening it so he could reach it.

* * *

Long minutes passed until he was allowed to foot in the corridors of Red Keep and return to the throne room where Daenerys was still waiting sitting on the steps where the Iron Throne used to stand. He thought that after the tense conversation with Serena, having Daenerys close would be more uncomfortable, even a shred of resentment arose in his mind. However, seeing her so undisturbed and calm made Jon feel ashamed.

Gray Worm once again positioned himself as her shadow while Dany looked at him questioningly without uttering a single word.

"She is beautiful," Jon said.

"She is," Dany agreed.

"Why..." he cleared his throat, "Can I ask you why are you here?"

Serena spoke of about Bran wanting to make her queen, but that sounded odd for Jon. 

"Not for pleasure," Dany assured still indifferent to his presence.

Of course, you are not here on your behalf, he thought. In her place, he wouldn't have return either. 

"And how long are you going to stay?" Jon asked at the thought of them leaving at any moment.

"I hope not too much," and those were sincere words, he understood. 

It was too much information in a very short time and many conflicting emotions. As if he were told to make a decision now. The last time he was in that same place, he chose badly.

"Would you let me see her until you leave? I want her to know something about me, _from me._ "

Jon wanted to be sure that at least if he wasn't going to see her again, she would get a better impression. A pleasant memory among so many notions of betrayal and rejection.

Dany's eyes looked at him boring.

"If she accepts you, I will not object," she simply replied.

"Thank you," and he knew the conversation was over there too, but he needed to add, "I know there is nothing that can tell you that could justify what happened, but if I could change it, I would."

"I don't," Dany responded suprisingly fast and sure, "At the end of the day we all got what we wanted. And there's no need to say something when the facts are clearer than the water: I needed to be stopped. And you are the shield that guards the realm of men, don't you? I only wish you haven't deluded me so cruelly. Using the thing I craved for so many days prior to that. But, as I told you before, I'm not the one trying to change the things.

Now he knows where the girl got that eloquence. There was something fundamentally wrong in that idea, however.

"It did not bring me any satisfaction. I have carried the weight of it all these years."

It had always tortured him to think that her last thoughts before she died were that he did it to take away the throne form her and not because of what she did, what she became and Jon's conflict with it. She seemed so convinced and that security was what he shattered forever.

Dany stopped as she sighed like a mother preparing to scold her child. However, it is a question that comes from his lips.

"Do you regret beating the Night King?"

That took him by surprise but he immediately grasped what she was trying to say. And in fact, it's what Jon said to console himself, a greater evil was avoided.

"No but you were not the Night King," he answered with the same response he'd give himself. Because he loved her, and he believed her another thing. 

In addition to this, there were so many unspoken words in those previous days, laments he swore to take to his grave and that for her, it seemed at a glance, it's irrelevant now. 

"No, I was the Dragon Queen," she says, climbing down the stairs, "And you were not a simple traitor."

It was personal. The damage was personal. 

Daenerys dodged his gaze and said something to Grey Worm in their language, which he replied by seeing Jon with some malice in his eyes and a slight smile. It probably had to do with his failed attempt to approach Serena.

In that moment, Tyrion approached the side aisle, announcing, "The King would like to speak with both of you."


	6. Impasse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> choices

**VI.**

**Impasse**

Daenerys never had the chance to see Red Keep in all its splendor and if she is not mistaken, this part of the castle that led to the solar of the monarch, was completely rebuilt. Was she so disoriented at that time? she wondered, then remembered her foolish attempt to make Jon Snow join her side and concluded that she was not in his correct mental state.

Tyrion escorted them until they reach a large gate where several soldiers with a three-eyed raven carved into their armor looked at the infamous mad queen with mistrust, or so she thought. Once inside, they found King Bran situated on the other side of a large wooden desk with two empty chairs in front of him. Behind her, came her not-so-dear company, who stared at the King with a restlessness similar to hers. None of them bowed or called his grace.

"Something bothers you," Bran pointed out, instead of greeting the brother she supposed he have not see in years. Tyrion mentioned that since his sentence, he had not left the Wall.

"How long have you known it?" Jon asked bluntly, his voice had a note of indignation. Daenerys looks at him sideways, interested in knowing the same thing.

"First it was a slight assumption," he replied, bestow at his brother or cousin the same indifferent form of adress with which he deals with everyone else, "Then I saw it clearly," this time he turned his eyes to Daenerys, "They were about to set sail for eastern ports."

Dany felt Jon's eyes on her as if he had the right to be offended because she had no plan to head west. 

"So when?" Jon insisted but Bran was already changing the subject.

"Take a seat. Both of you."

"That's an order?" Daenerys inquired with an arched eyebrow in defiance that Bran responded smiled. 

"We all have to talk about what will happen to her," Tyrion hastened to explain, again as an intermediary between parties. 

Daenerys stirred at that comment, frowned and took a few steps forward to say:

"Nothing. Because she's mine and mine alone," she sounded clear and determined on this idea. "Jon may sired her, but nothing concerns him about her welfare. And again, this absurd problem with claims can no longer matter to us. You choose your Kings now."

She tried to be emphatic on this last point.

"I care that she's alright!" Jon stated visibly altered as if the weight of that day was just falling on his shoulders. "I know you believe the worst of me and you are in your right but I swear that I worry for her."

Daenerys decided that ignoring him was the best, rather than yielding to the need to silence him with raw words. You don't know anything about her, she'd like to tell him. Possession ran through her veins.

"I didn't understand it first but I accepted it for everyone's sake," Bran's monotonous voice interrupted the small discussion, "Anyway, war is a constant and peace relative. My place is not to intervene but to watch. Store information until the next one replaces me.

"When I saw the dragon flying over King's Landing, I said nothing because I assumed it was inevitable that it would happen. I insist that it is not my duty to intervene. When I saw Tyrion asking me to take over this place, I also did not refuse because I saw it happening. Then, a few years ago I began to see a young queen, similar to Daenerys but it was not Daenerys, I saw her sitting on a throne, not the iron throne but a throne of dragonglass and weirwood wood, a queen of ice and fire."

Dany took a deep breath and stood still, thinking that it was her daughter he was referring to. However, she had never imagined her as a queen. Since what happened, she had been grateful to be able to raise her away from this world. Away from these people.

"My child is not pawn of yours."

"And I'm not intended to hurt her," Bran affirmed, "Here she shall be safe and guarded."

"By my side, she's safe and guarded," Daenerys kept firm on her position.

Bran stared at her knowingly. 

"But you are never totally sure. You're always looking behind your shoulders, suspecting of any who is not you, fearing your own food," he could go on but choose to stop when Daenerys tensed.

She closed her eyes and felt the hand of Torgo Nudho on her shoulder, providing the rest she seemed never embrace. It was true that, from the moment Serena born, she had to watch around in every corner to feel safe. No matter where she was, it always felt endangered. 

"How that will change being here? Here is where all my enemies, my murderer," she gestured towards Jon, "are. How being here can possibly mean more safety?"

"People need what you can provide them," Bran said, staring down at Tyrion, "She is the owner of a trade fleet of Essos that blockaded our routes."

In that instant, Tyrion's face went on in an expression of disbelief that surpassed the others. Daenerys felt prideful but at the same time helplessness because that has always been a half-secret that was now in the mouths of too many enemies. Where would Tyrion have believed that she got all those ships to transport the Unsullied?

"How..." Tyrion tried to ask but it was Jon, until then in attentive silence, who came forward.

"Are you the one who has been causing the shortage? There are people dying because of that blockade," it was not a complaint but a kind of appeal that, however, Daenerys answered with disdain.

"And what are you going to do? Kill me?"

It was a sufficiently scathing comment for the room to mute and become too small.

"If destiny is for her to be queen, there will be few things you can do against it," Bran continued without interest in the tense emotions that flowed, "Last time you lost control and it was not for good. But maybe this is your chance to change everything."

* * *

Old habits resist the passage of time better than us, then, Tyrion thought as he stealthily approached an angry Jon who finished destroying a practice dummy that probably had Tyrion's face in his imagination. His mind went to strange places when he was as nervous as that moment. The first time he met Jon the setting was similar, both much younger and not knowing that they would be hopelessly bound to this point.

Tyrion cleared his throath to announce his presence that was already cleary noticed by his partner in crime. Jon shoot an agry face at him but then continued with his destruction. 

"I owe you an apology," Tyrion didn't know how else to greet him, "If it's any consolation, the girl almost takes my eye out," he jested, thought a wave of pain still lingered in his face.

"She aimed at me," Jon revealed with an exhausted voice, "And she took my dagger, _the_ dagger, with her to protect herself from me. She barely grant me her name and prefers to consider me her cousin. You owe me much more than an apology. And I'm glad she made that scar, she should've gotten the eye." 

"It could be worse," Tyrion tried to speak even though his heavy breathing and groans placated his intentions to talk and not end up encrusted by his sword. "Daenerys might not let you see her."

"Worse?" Jon annoyedly asked. "It's the girl who rejects me. And she has every right to do it. I killed them both!"

For a man who had been an outcast all his life for being a bastard, being rejected again in that way shouldn't be easy. Daenerys and her daughter, their circle of Unsullied and Dothraki, were a beyond Jon's grasp at the moment. Tyrion would do his best to correct that situation, if he's allowed.

"Your family has overcome worse things," he did mean the Targaryens though he doesn't knew if Jon considers them so. "It may take some time, but she will learn to see that you are a good man and appreciate you for that."

"Why should she do it? I've missed everything, I didn't even know she existed. Instead, Dany and all those people around her," he had probably witnessed the great entourage that Daenerys brought with her. "There's a built life and I'm not part of it."

"She's young. She still has a lot of life to build," Tyrion was making the best effort to be optimistic.

The poor object that was already torn to pieces fell to the ground in surrender. Jon stood still watching his anger reflected in the disaster and immersed in his own thoughts.

He finally spoke, "I'm not going to listen to you anymore. All you do is destroy and I've been just as guilty for contributing to things ending as they ended up." He turned to watch her fellow traitor, "Maybe it's best to let _them_ go."

That last part of his statement run bells on Tyrion; a detail that perhaps went unnoticed for Jon, but which, given the circumstances, could result in something favorable. 

"Them?" Tyrion repeated, questioning if that bit was deliberated. "I thought you were only interested in the child."

He did not know if Jon was aware that, despite fall short of words to express his emotions like any other functional human being, just in his face they could be found by the naked, attentive eye. In his gestures too; the way he got nervous and averted his stare.

"She is the mother of my child," he said dodging the subject. 

And your aunt and victim, Tyrion would have added if he had been still a cynic. 

"That doesn't mean you have a duty to her. I don't think I can be benevolent with you here. She seems..."

"Totally indifferent?" Jon hurried.

Tyrion nodded.

"I think she has overcome it better than us, yes," which was ironic, how controlled and resolved she was, giving little thought to the matter and letting them be as if she had only had a heated disagreement with them and not them plotting and succeeding in killing her and her unborn child. Tyrion understood that her intention to distance herself from them.

"I don't want my daughter to be a bastard," he kept diverting the heart of the matter, "And I don't want _them_ to leave."

There is again, Tyrion thought, _them_.

What he was about to try could cost his head.

"Bran says she is special and so I believed Daenerys the first time," He explained, "What if Serena is as special one as her mother? Willing to wipe out everything she has in front of her to achieve her goals?"

As he foreseen, he had the blade of the sword pointed at his throat immediately. He was making the man angry at the time of greatest volatility.

"Then I'm going to kill you before you can go and seed the same idea on another dimwit like me," it was the darkest he had heard his voice since that time they talked about stopping Daenerys.

"Even Sansa and her children?" Tyrion insisted, a drop of sweat falling down his forehead, "Lya and Eddard?"

The question undulated his determination for a moment but just as quickly, he said, "I'll be there for her, even if it's from afar, but I'm going to make sure she doesn't feel like Dany."

Tyrion breathed calmly. He already knew that he had a place in the seven hells for trying to put father against daughter.

"It was the answer I was looking for if I'm honest," he admitted, "There's one way to solve this problem, which could be convenient for both parties."

* * *

Daenerys couldn't believe what her ears were hearing coming from Tyrion Lannister's mouth. He continued with his explanation, the sound turned into a stutter as her countenance turned into a true mask of horror.

"Marriage?" she repeated his offer as if he had offended her, "Are you out of your senses? Do you want me to marry the man who murdered me?"

"That turns out to be the father of your only daughter," he tilted his head a little and made a gesture with his hands, "A bas..."

"Don't even think about finishing that sentence. No child of mine is a bastard."

Daenerys couldn't believe that he allows himself to talk about such madness and also to insinuate that Serena was a bastard. She had been through too many things in her life to placate herself because she was not married at the time of conceiving and giving birth to her.

"It will help underlie her claim," Tyrion insisted, "It will only be a facade until she is in the age to take the throne," Daenerys perceived despair in his features, "We need people to have faith in our crown again before everything succumbs to desertion."

She understood what he meant but didn't care in the least. This was the man who had promised her the Seven Kingdoms, with whom she spent endless evenings sharing her plans, desires, and dreams only for him to encourage the man who she loved to kill her. There was no reason for her to trust his words, not even in his diligence. If Westeros was in the situation it was in, it probably had to do with Tyrion being the hand of a king whom nobody respected enough.

"Excuse me, but the last time you thought the same of me-"

"You didn't give them time! They would have loved you if you had proved them to be different than the rest of _them!_ " Tyrion shouted, eliciting Grey Worm to stood closer by her with his hand over the hilt of his dagger. The only reason why he was not yet cutting the throat of all the people in this castle was that Daenerys did not consider it relevant to dive into a bloodbath.

"It has no case, you will never admit that you were wrong and that you are a selfish imp just like the rest of the miserable people who inhabit this shit hole," She let her raw self escape. The one that has spent years sailing alongside sailors and trading with merchants from all over the known world. In Tyrion's eyes, she saw that a truth was revealed; She was no longer the queen he met.

"Dany," he tried to appeal to her nickname, the one who she never heard him say so far. The discomfort in her face made him retract immediately. "Daenerys. Let's be honest, I know we don't deserve your trust, you should kill us both for treason. We, ourselves do not forgive our traitors," she remembered that he murdered her father and his lover, the latter in a way that Daenerys never condoned. "But the point is that you are different even if you were wrong in doing what you did."

Daenerys leaned against the back of the chair and placed her arms on each side of the armrests to look at him. In all the years that have passed, she has dealt with that predicament. It did not excuse the fact that she put all her confidence in them, gave them everything, and they left her at her worst, failed her in every way possible and now they intended to reap a benefit from her.

"You left this shit hole as a corpse and return as the ambassadress of Essos, owner of a trading company that is about to destroy our economy, I think it is enough for me, for us to understand that I was wrong," Tyrion admitted and she could've believed him if it was another man. "I was afraid, seeing you there turned into everything you did not want to be, proud to be."

"Then you sent Jon to kill me. Did you also tell him that he should make me believe that he was embracing me when he was actually looking for the right place to thrust the dagger in? Was that also one of your magnificent ideas, Tyrion?"

"He fought until the very end to find a reason not to do it."

"But he did it," she stated, standing and leaving the matter there. "We will return to Essos and if you dare or anyone dare to follow us I will take care of Westeros burning from the Wall to the dunes of Dorne."

"You can have everything you always wanted," Tyrion almost pleaded, "Deep down in your heart, you know he regrets it and would kill himself before hurting you again."

It was interesting that both were talking not to their versions of the present, she as who she is now and what he, whatever he has become, but to their versions of the past, she, the idealistic girl with a dream and her fragile heart at hands, and he always the opportunistic and cynical one, good to withdraw himself and evaluate the situation from afar and try to manipulate the order of things at pleasure. 

"That changed the moment I died," Dany corrected him, thinking back to they day Serena born, "Now all I want and need is my daughter."

"And she? What does she want and need?" Tyrion retorted, "She was very excited on the journey back home."

"This is not home for us," she bluntly opposed.

It was true that Serena spent the days on the ship asking Dany about Red Keep and the history of the Targaryen. At first, she did not allow Tyrion to witness those conversations or to walk close to her daughter, but it became inevitable. 

"Then keep in mind what she wants," he tried one last time, "You told me that...you promised her stability."

There was a reason why they would be sailing to the eastern ports had it not been because their location was unveiled by Bran. That dream of marching to settle in a distant destiny was forever forgotten now.

* * *

Serena was lying on the bench of the balcony, watching the elegant chandelier that loomed over her while she listened to the soft whispering of the maids who came and went fixing the tower where she was supposed to spend the rest of her days until the day she was named Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.

The place was protected by the Unsullied guards while Vazi and Maetho stayed inside checking that none of the "slaves" of the castle wanted to steal some of her belongings.

"Brown Fox," she called one of her protectors, a highly trusted Unsullied soldier and a friend of Torgo Nudho, a true confidant of hers. He approached the little princess, as they nicknamed her. "Do you think we could take the city in one day?"

The soldier frowned but gave her a smile almost immediately, "in less," he scoffed, probably remembering the last time they were there. Serena also smiled, not because that horrific day had something good to be remembered, but because she liked to feel that they were standing on the best ground when it came to their enemies. And that was the curious thing about the situation, they could do what they wanted, however, they were there, peacefully dealing with their murderers. One of them, her father.

Serena had been thinking about him, about the ungainly man who turned out to be her father. Not what she expected, nor someone that left her amazed. From her mother's stories, as scarce as they were, one would think that something more relevant would have killed the Dragon Queen. Hell, even Daario Naharis was the kind of man you would distrust, she thought, remembering her mother's friend. The man who appeared in front of her seemed too weak to have caused so much damage. Serena loved her mother, but she wouldn't have let something like that destroy her life's efforts.

She heard her mother's voice when she entered the room, after the talk with Tyrion Lannister. One could tell by the circles under her eyes that she was exhausted and came undone from arguing with him.

Serena sat on the bench and waited for her mother to join her and report the situation. 

"Allow us a minute, please," she asked the guards who nodded respectfully, placing themselves inside the chamber. They never wanted to leave them alone for so long.

"Muña," she greeted. While they were in Red Keep, their conversations would tend to keep in Valyrian they had agreed.

"Is Red Keep all you imagined?" she asked, settling beside her and fixing the stubborn curls of Serena's hair.

"Kind of," she shrugged, "quaint but shoddy."

It was not the magnificence she could have expected had she believed all the stories and stories.

"So you met him," she murmured and Serena hated that she had to feel that way.

"I'd never believed you fall for such man," she couldn't help protesting.

"He wasn't so scruffy back then," her muña returned.

"Someday I'll ask you what you saw in him beyond appearance."

"Someday I'll answer you."

Both let out a carefree and confident laugh, although the matter did not lend itself to such a thing. If they hadn't put a smile on every shitty situation that happened to them, they would both be in a corner crying in fear.

"I thought it will feel like a homecoming," Serena confessed with her throat closed in angst at the notion of another place that lost charm in her imagination, "But everything feels detached," a castle built by the Targaryen that ceased to belong to them so long ago.

"Do you want me to ask Captain Selain to take us home?"

"Home?" she savored the word in her mouth; always bittersweet. "What home? Braavos? Meereen? Lys? Volantis?"

"The sea," her mother added to the long list of places they had wandered, "We can keep traveling and find for that place."

"A boat is not a home," she dissented, her stomach hurting in nervousness. 

"Nor is Westeros."

"We've been here so little. What about Dragonstone? Sure we can go there and..."

"I think it's occupied by now."

"It's ours!"

"It was ours," her mother sighed, "Westeros was ours. Now it's just a memory, we can move on and find a better place."

She felt irritation because she didn't understand her but neither Serena provided the right words to finish explaining that she was tired of that same excuse.

"A better place? I'm tired of such quest," she shifted her dark eyes to the ocean color that flooded her mother's, "Why are we, the dragons, running away from sheep, lions, and wolves?"

"Because they killed us once!" there was a horror note in what she claimed, "If something happens to you..."

"I will protect us, Drogon will protect us," Serena left no stone unturned, "We just have to be careful this time. We have ourselves and all we need is ourselves. Remember?"

"So you want it," her mother concluded, astound, "You want to be queen."

"I want to bring glory to our family's name," she said in a thin voice, as it fearing someone would listen and try to steal them from it as in the past. As when her father took away those dreams from her.

There was doubt and fear in her mother's eyes, not because Serena's desire was far-fetched, but because that meant staying in a place that had only given her regrets. Then Serena promised herself to make Westeros a place that was a home for them, for Torgo Nudho and the immense family they all made up.

Only her family mattered and those outside were the enemy, she decided.


	7. Control

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kingdoms of Disaster

**VII.**

**Control**

The first time he finds her again, she is being trained by some Unsullied soldiers. Jon had not planned to see her that day, after being locked up "trying to become a man again" as Tyrion suggested. Although she was small in stature and texture, similar to Arya when she was that same age, she pretty agile for her early one and ten. He was not surprised, after all, she had the Unsullied and the Dothraki on her side teaching her to defend herself against men like him, probably.

"Are you going to stay watching or are you going to contribute with something?" she caught up his attention when he had been gone too long in his own thoughts.

It was the first characteristic of many that reminded him of Dany, her contempt for silence. Meanwhile, Jon could spend hours thinking about the same subject for hours without saying a word. How he wished to see something of him in her beyond the physical resemblance. But he understood it was too early, bloody early to desire something like that.

The guards around her stirred up in his presence and he took this as a forewarning. _You can talk not approach_. 

"Have you trained with a sword?" he couldn't believe it was what came out of his mouth. His mind was not prepared for this encounter. 

She kept shooting arrows indifferently. 

"Torgo Nudho considers them excessive and disadvantageous," she answered notwithstanding. "I'll learn someday, though."

That last piece was undeservedly encouraging for him. He couldn't blame Grey Worm for taking his place, no matter how much Jon hated it.

"How long have you trained?" It was the next question that flowed out his mouth with his nervousness at full gallop. 

"Since I had reached use of reason," she confessed. 

It was not a strange notion for him that came from the North, where children were trained in the same way. But something in her voice sounded unnerving and misplaced. 

"May I ask you about your childhood?"

"Go on," she allowed him. 

"When were you born?"

He guessed it must have been moons after what he did to her mother, for what he never notice Dany's condition when they were still together. She should be a little younger than Sam and Gilly's son. 

"On the tenth moon's turn of the 305th year after Aegon Conquest," Serena replied and confirmed his suspicions. Dany and her were resurrected shortly after it happened. That thought made him sight in defeating. 

"Where?" he went on. 

This time she took longer in answering, speaking with the guards in their shared tongue. How many languages do you know? How many places you've been? He had so many questions in mind.

"Meereen," she responded after shooting another arrow that hit almost in the center of the board. 

The foolish part of him wished that Dany had searched for him, but he knew immediately that it was a tremendously insane and undeserved idea. She did well in running away. He had no right to protest. 

"Your mother said she told you everything."

"She did."

"There's something you'd wish to know _from_ me?" he avoided saying _about_ on purpose. It didn't work as he wished.

"Your side of the story?" she was astonished; almost offended and that scared him for a moment. "Sure it must be interesting but the result won't change my opinion on the matter," her face changed in a hard expression, "You won't get me on your side."

"It is not...what I was trying to do--," he hurried up to correct. She didn't let him explain, nonetheless. 

"My mother does not speak ill words of you, never," she stated, "Return the favor and leave the past where it belongs. No one needs to hear sad stories."

Jon felt the little progress crumble into rubble, but he encouraged himself thinking it could not be otherwise.

What tormented him most was the little time he would apparently have to meet her and seed another kind of idea about him in her, that although it would not heal the notion of being her murderer at least it would give her something more to keep in mind when they eventually depart to never be seen again.

Instead of demanding his leaving, she continued asking,

"Do you still have the direwolf?"

"Ghost?" he asked, amazed Dany would tell her about him. "Aye, he lives free in the Haunted Forest."

"Can't you bring him?"

His heart accelerated at the sound of that. His daughter wanted to meet Ghost.

"He isn't exactly a pup, but I could try if that makes you happy," he did his best effort not to sound desperate though he was. 

"Well, try then," Serena required with a defiant tone. 

Jon drew a hopeful smile.

* * *

Waking up in Red Keep didn't get easier with the passing of days. It was as if walls were made of linen and every sound, whisper, and noise of the halls and the city below reached her ear. Her latent paranoia hitting again.

Shortly after a moon since their arrival at King's Landing, Daenerys has had trouble for properly falling asleep. Not that she had much of it since she returned from death and has had to live again in the shadows of discreet anonymity. Her thoughts returned to her daughter, all that concerned her was a torment to her. Her safety and well-being was the only thing she cared about insuring. Going back to the nest of lions and wolves was far from achieving that.

Vizi helped her get ready for another day of exhaustive revisions of the Seven Kingdoms' financial situation. King's Landing was wetter than Braavos, so they chose to braid her hair so that no loosened traces were left out of the braid's grip. She put on a crimson gown gifted by the Sealord in her last staying at his palace and marched escorted by Torgo Nudho to the Tower of the Hand.

  
The Realm was in bankrupt, the tax base did not cover the default created by the last loan requested to the Iron Bank during the reign of Cersei. The infrastructure of the city remained ruinous and trade did not grow thanks to the boom of her commercial fleet in Essos that blocked the routes that previously corresponded to the western market.

  
Every now and then Tyrion tried to cheer the mood by appealing to his sharp sense of humor. Daenerys did not give in at all, nor did she yielded to his ridiculous idea of legitimizing Serena by marrying Jon.

  
Even if it was against her daughter's wishes, Daenerys had to put a firm fist on that matter. She would deal with Westeros only to free herself at once from the fears and tricks of the lords, but she and Serena could not stay. No way.

  
Eventually, the day came when they would meet with the Great Council, made up of the most important lords and ladies of Westeros to face them and make available her help to buy her tranquility and peace on the other side of the Narrow Sea.

It did not happen as she had wished.

The council was made up of the four cardinal wardens and the lords of the most important seats.

In the South, a vestige of House Tyrell occupied the title of Warden and Lord of Highgarden. Willas was his name and he seemed sympathetic. 

In the East, a man who looked more like a boy with a beard, with a disdainful look, introduced himself as Warden and Lord of the Eyrie, Robyn Arryn, son of Jon Arryn, one of the men who fought for the fall of Dany's father, the Mad King.

Daenerys took a deep breath and ignored his childish gesture.

In the West, there was a surprise. It was no longer the seat of House Lannister, a title that Tyrion could not claim after having served the fall of his own house. Daenerys rejoiced in some extent. Instead of the Lannisters, now a woman not much older than her, Alysanne Lefford, became Warden of the West. She also looked at her with distrust but her treatment still remained respectful.

Finally and to her displeasure, Sansa Stark, Warden of the North and Lady of Winterfell, a title that she protected with nails and teeth although Daenerys had never threatened. Tyrion talked about her unsuccessful attempt to make the North independent, a folly that was halted in time thanks to his intervention when he convinced the lords that it was a stupid decision, taking into account the condition of the North at the time, which had not improved in the present either. Apparently, she also married a man from the Vale, a Harold Hardying who greets her with enough courtesy to replace what his wife still lacked.

Lord Gendry Baratheon was still in Stormlands, Lord Edmure Tully kept Riverlands, and to her delight, Yara Greyjoy also held the Iron Islands.

"Give me the signal and we cut the throat of all these fuckers to take your throne," was the first thing she whispered when she approached Daenerys. "By the way, I'm still up for anything."

Daenerys inclined her head to hide a slight smile.

The last to appear, couldn't be otherwise, was Princess Nymerios Martell of Dorne, one of the bastard daughters, later legitimized, of Oberyn Martell, Arianne. A beautiful and exuberant woman but by her gaze, determined and ambitious as Daenerys herself.

Tyrion tried to start the meeting but the lords did not want to hear him, but to know the truth about her assassination and disappearance.

She was aware that none of them would believe in resurrections, they were not even informed of Jon's true identity. Daenerys looked at Tyrion who returned a silent plea for her to comply with what they agreed in the meetings.

"I asked Lord Snow to excuse me," she gave in to that and began to tell, "I had committed a terrible crime. I had become what I swore never to be, my father's daughter. My efforts had not counted for my allies," she looks up at Sansa, "and adversaries. However, I kept my word and overthrew Cersei Lannister. You decided your destiny thereafter, and I don't come to claim anything from you."

"So Lord Snow didn't kill her? Did we condemn an innocent man to a life sentence on the Wall?"

Dany felt the need to roll her eyes but restraint herself. She never finished meeting Jon, but she knew that a life in the North, with the Stark ruling Westeros and he free of any responsibility, was not exactly a punishment. 

"I'm afraid it escaped from my reach what he said to excuse me."

She met Brandon Stark's indifferent eyes. It seemed that again he did not intend to intervene.

"Your grace," Willas Tyrell called her, startling Daenerys who has only been called that way by the Unsullied, in High Valyrian.

"Don't call me that," she demanded too harshly, so she corrected herself. "I mean, I'm not a monarch here or anywhere else."

"Daenerys," he continues in a harmonious voice, a contrast to the thick accents of the North, the Vale and Yara. "You will know that those decisions were made under an erroneous belief that the only and last rightful heiress was dead."

She was, she thought bitterly up her throat.

"I insist that I have no desire to claim any power. As far as I am concerned, House Targaryen is extinct."

"I dissent. is alive and more than alive, it is growing," added the voice of the Dornish Princess. "You didn't arrive alone on the shores of King's Landing."

Her heart sped up and she looked for Tyrion's help.

"I assume the girl is a product of the alliance with the former King of the North?"

_Girl_. They knew about Serena. Everything was crumbling just as she predicted.

"My alliance with you is still standing, Queen Daenerys," Yara Greyjoy rushed to add. "Anyway, the king to whom we placed our faith can no longer answer for our needs."

Instantly, the voices rose and Dragon Pit was small for the scandal that had precipitated. Tyrion had warned that at every meeting, there were always great quarrels. The kingdoms were more divided than ever and there was always risks of secession. He imposed order once he yielded to the demands, unable to give another answer. The king would shine for his silence. 

Not this time.

"It's not your claim that matters," Bran's voice interrupted the hubbub. "It is your current position. Isn't it?"

Dany gulped the hardness in her throat. 

"What is her current position?" Sansa Stark spoke and broke her self-imposed silence. Her voice is still annoying, Dany thought. 

"Lady," Tyrion emphasized to make things clear and because of her request, "Daenerys owns the Great Black Company," he revealed with a weakened tone, fully cognizant of the fuss it would start.

First, there was silence. Daenerys squeezed her hands together in her lap as if she should be ashamed for something. 

"The entire fleet?" Lord Edmure Tully asked, bewildered. 

"The entire fleet, my lord," Tyrion assured.

"And that's why I am here," Daenerys hastened to add, "To lay on a proposition; stop your senseless hunt against me and my daughter and I'll provide Westeros the help needed to recover your economy, your order and your existences," once she said it, she felt relieved. It should be enough, she reassured herself. 

"The entire fleet?" Robyn Arryn also was still shocked. 

Neither she nor Tyrion were surprised by that reaction. It was the reason she preferred to keep her business anonymous and from a distance. It was not only her name that placed her in a complicated situation but the trading company she had founded so many years ago with Daario and Greyworm in Bay of Dragons.

"What our King thinks about this matter?," Lord Hardying popped out.

There was a glimpse of amusement on his pale, quiet face.

"You chose me because I didn't want anything and because I have no real interest in your existence. Why my opinion would be relevant now? Daenerys doesn't want it either, apparently, that makes her a good candidate in your eyes." 

She sighed again.

"Excuse me, are we just forgetting about the massacre of civilians she committed when King's Landing already surrendered?" Sansa protested. "Daenerys Targaryen had only shown misdeed towards our land. How to impose to out people such a ruler?"

"Good, we finally agree on something, Lady Sansa," Daenerys retorted. "I repeat for all of you, I haven't come to take back my family's now extinguished throne. I've come back because once you learned about my location you started sending assassins as if I hadn't already people embittering my existence. I can easily bring my dragon," at this comment everyone tensed in their seats. "and end this nonsense. Would you like me to do that? Let's put this matter to rest for once and for all and accept my proposition."

Silence. More silence.

"Very well," Daenerys lamented but before she could stand and leave, Willas Tyrell stopped her.

"May I ask you if you regretted what happened in King's Landing?"

She didn't know if it were his words or the simple fact that she recalled that moment, but Daenerys felt suddenly in an uncomfortable position. 

  
"Of course," she stated firmly, "But my regret won't change anything."

  
"It changes everything," he opposed her, "There's still something you can do to change and amend your mistakes. While I do not speak for everyone here, I care about our Realm. I truly had faith in King Bran when we chose him. I can no longer ignore his lack of ability to resolve our problems and while your offer could be a great improvement to our current disaster, we still need someone with enough power to make the difference before our little quarrels become into another civil war. Of course, it's better if, for now, the dragon is put aside and we limit to your other sources of power."

"I agree," Lady Lefford stepped forward, to everyone surprise. "She has a good claim, sufficient power, and influence. Last time you were a child playing against a wicked woman. If it wasn't you, Cersei would've blown the entire country with wildfire to subdue the other Kingdoms. May she was a Lannister but she killed her own uncle and daughter-in-law and Queen when she blew the Septon of Baelor, and later took the crown when her son, King Tommen, committed suicide."

It sounded odd but it clarified for Daenerys why the Lannister were not ruling the Westerlands anymore.

"All of those are good reasonings but Daenerys is still a murderer, as malignant as Tywin and Cersei Lannister," Arianne Martell pointed out. "If lending us aid through your company and influences can help you sleep at night, very well, but Dorne will not call Queen a person like you."

  
"Neither will the North," Sansa sentenced, gaining a leer from her husband by her side. 

  
Daenerys breathed sharply at her comment. Both actually. She was insisting that she had no desire to stay in Westeros anymore but they believed that she was coming as a conqueror to impose her reign. It was ridiculous to think so, the continent's problems were so many that even she and her company could not solve them. Years of negligence and disorder would not be resolved because she would unlock their commercial routes at her own expense. But at the same time, leaving without solving this situation meant returning to the life of fugitives.

  
She met Tyrion knowing eyes that have an "I told you" engraved on them.

  
"Tell them who Serena is," Bran suggested, again startling the audience because of his suddenness. "Tell the truth."

  
"It's not my truth to tell," Dany replied bluntly and certain. 

  
"It's yours, too," he insisted, "It affects you, and last time you lost control of it. Isn't better to have the handle now?"

  
She understood what he implied. It was a low, malicious thing to do, even when Jon had committed something terrible against her. 

  
_"This is not about what you both had in the past," Daenerys remembered Tyrion's arguments for pushing the matter of marriage. "This is about damage control. You can't keep hiding all your life, your daughter's life, and whoever that comes after her. Either you face them by becoming the Queen you were meant to be or you...wipe Westeros out of the map with your dragon. This is your legacy and you...personal avenge on all of us. Just think about it, you don't have to keep him by your side."_

  
When she opened her eyes again, Lords, Ladies and the Princess were expectant, waiting for her to say something. So Daenerys told them the truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading.
> 
> Initially, I was planning to use Quentyn Martell as Prince of Dorne but then I changed it for Arianne.


	8. The Right Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Exchanging interests

**VIII.**

**The Right Thing.**

Jon made the necessary formalities for Tormund to bring Ghost to King's Landing. He was really excited to have this little aspect of his life to share with Serena; A door to greater possibilities.

He is placed at an opposite end of the castle, far away to the chambers of the girl and her mother, so he never came across with Dany. However, he hears many things about her.

At first, there was terror and he considered it understandable due to her previous visit. But over time that mutated in fascination, people got intrigued by the procession who filled Red Keep with life after years of mute indifference, coldness, and uncertainty.

With a contrite heart, he wished things had been this way from the beginning. He found himself yearning having done things differently, having loved her better, having noticed what she was carrying in time and then having taken another decision. 

_Be with me_. That's what she asked him and he rejected it with a knife in her heart and now she was back with a daughter he would be unlikely fortunate to hold for a time before both are gone again. He could have had this family. 

They are your family, one way or another, he reminded himself. As much as they should hate him, he can't help but care for both. 

Something changed the day the meeting with the Great Council took place. Tyrion summoned him to the Tower of the Hand. It was days before Ghost arrival, causing Jon to dread he was running out of time.

Dany was there too; cold, distant, and secretive as always. She had returned to be an enigma. In the middle, twelve years in which she lived a life he would never be part of. She didn't seem to care that he existed at all as if they had been acquaintances from a distant time now gone. Dead. Buried with all the dreams that died in the snowstorm. 

The room was too small for her to tolerate his presence, he knew. So, she was standing on the balcony with Grey Worm by her side, turning her back on them, and leaning against the battlements. 

The ambient felt somber. 

"We have to discuss something," Tyrion started by placing himself in the middle of them as he once stood as a liaison. Jon resented his presence.

"They leave," Jon assumed, his pulse quickened in despair and impotence. He did not wait for Tyrion to continue when he directly appeal to Dany, "I beg you just a little more time. She wants to meet Ghost..."

"She won't leave," Tyrion interrupted his entreaty. Jon's heart stops his pace for a moment. "Neither of them will," he added.

Tyrion made a pause and shook his head defeated, almost like trying to come up with his next explanation. 

"The Seven Kingdoms are not in a position to continue playing the game of thrones. You asked me once if we did the right thing and I told you to ask me in ten years. Well, here I am, before you two, asking -not-, begging for forgiveness for having placed you in this situation and for not finding a better solution for the circumstances we were at that time because of the serious mistakes we all made." His darkened stare went to Dany's back, and then again to Jon. "I have no right to want to influence in your decisions and this will be my last attempt to bring some healing into you. Your daughter is not just any girl. She is the last vestige of a long dynasty that was destined to be extinguished on severe occasions but did not. She is attentive, precocious and witty, has extraordinary potential to turn the disaster that we leave her into a new hope," he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, "I know that I cannot claim to have all answers, but I swear I have good intentions."

Tyrion had a habit of using his words to accommodate the situation at pleasure, that Jon knew better than anyone. However, something sounded almost melancholic and true in what he said as if he were actually bidding farewell.

"I don't understand what's going on," Jon admitted when his mind began to wander in uncertainty. He was sure it had to do with the meeting of the Great Council; something had not gone well, he supposed.

On the balcony, Daenerys stirred and he thought she would speak, but she didn't. She stayed there, too interested in the view of Blackwater Bay and ignoring his confusion inside the room. Her little figure so close and yet so far.

"What happened at the meeting?" He finally asked, eager to obtain an answer.

The Lannister's expression stained again with chagrin. 

"They know Serena is not just Daenerys' bastard child. They know she is Daenerys and Aegon Targaryen's child," he swallowed hard, eyes settled on the ground, "They know House Targaryen is more than alive."

It took him one second to realize what he was trying to say and why he sounded so apologetic thereon. Jon has fretted over this moment to come and the truth to pursue him once again. He'd ignored it pretty well until now.

He flinched and closed his eyes in a disconcerting expression. 

"I asked you, I demanded of you to never speak about it," he reclaimed as it was the only sane thing to do.

"And we complied," Tyrion defended, before trying to make up an excuse, "It wouldn't have been a secret forever."

But it should, he thought, staring at Daenerys on the exterior. 

"It was Sansa?" he immediately asked, wrath boiling on the back of his mind. 

"What?" Tyrion is taken aback.

"Did Sansa tell them?" Jon repeated with a blunt grunt.

"No," her voice disrupted the heated exchange, turning around to face them and meeting his eyes for the first time in almost a month. He felt his legs weakening. "I did," she stated.

* * *

She ached because he still rejected that side of him that he never accepted and wouldn't. Not that she didn't take it for granted a long time ago. This was the reason why, as much as he tried, he would never form a real bond with Serena. He despised and disgusted that half of his blood. Blood that were them.

"Why?" he questioned with astonishment, caught off-balance with this action of hers. It would be not the first time she does it.

_Because last time you didn't understand how serious it was and you let them use you to destroy me. Now I'm going to use you to keep them from marginalizing mine and my daughter's life._

Instead, she replied,

"Because sometimes one wants to run from destiny but destiny runs after us."

So it was in a certain way. Had she thought things through coldly, she wouldn't have finished where she ended. Daenerys promised to never think with her heart again.

"Right now, all those lords and ladies are marching back to their homes to prepare their daughters for the last male Targaryen heir," she described, "And might some of them are already buying poison to clean that way up. Root and stem," she emphasized. 

Something like horror stained his expression. At least this, he seemed to understand. 

"You and I, we have to make a sacrifice," she began with the hardest part. How is that she's always the one putting aside her pride, she wondered by stepping forward the threshold. "You'll not like it as I don't. Believe me that if I have the possibility to return to the life I've had before, I would. But that's the burden that comes with this name, with my condition and Serena's."

Tyrion darted a glance on them and Dany nodded for him to lay on the same plan to Jon. 

She avoided beholding his reaction and instead she focused her eyes on a forgotten, dust-filled tome in Tyrion's shelf called the Song of Ice and Fire, capital letters tainted in gold.

"Is this what you want?" he questioned with a steel ridge on his voice. He was truly troubled, in her opinion. 

"Want?" she mocked, "Oh no. I already told you what I want. But that's the crux of the matter I forgot to attend the first time. It should never have been about wanting but about duty. When feelings govern reason, things like what happened happens and I would never put myself back in that situation when my priority is her and her wellbeing."

"And you believe me not committed enough?" 

With the truth of his parentage already spilled and served, she would answer that his amount of involvement doesn't matter much anyway. It's this path or killing him to guarantee a safe way out for her and Serena.

"As long as you show some compromise with us," because she knew she couldn't ask for more of him, "it will be enough. We marry. She becomes your rightful child and the Council takes her into consideration in the future when the time of a new monarch comes. Meanwhile, I stay here as the new Hand of your brother to amend my mistakes by lending aid to this...situation in which you are as a nation. Marriage means alliance and our younger selves did the hardest part for us not to have to care for that anymore. I assume by your recent deeds, you will want to stay to keep on knowing Serena."

She perceived an ounce of annoyance in his gaze that she didn't know how to interpret. Was he still disgusted by their relation that the simple idea of a marriage embittered him so roughly? She was clear on the terms of it.

"You don't want this," he insisted on the subjective approach of the things.

"I don't. Who person would?" the intention was actually to mean, who person lives just to marry his attacker. But she supposed he already noticed this.

I don't know what went through his mind that, after minutes of ignoring the presence of Tyrion, it suddenly became annoying for him and asked him to leave us. He was not absurd in requiring Torgo to do the same.

"As sadistic as it sounds, I care for you," he then said but it was like hearing the wind blow for her. "And I already love our daughter. You..." he trembled a little, "You are my family. And I will protect you if you have me."

She felt queasy about that notion. At any moment she meant to say they needed him; they don't, they will never will. This was the safe passage, the right way to do things. Daenerys was certain she could deal with it in the other way. 

"It's not your protection that matters, Jon," she clarified with a slight smile, "It is your true name and the consequences of it. I told you before how it was used against me the first time and I plan to command those consequences on my favor and my child's favor this time."

I have the control this time, she wanted to say. 

"To what extent?" 

"At least, you are making the right question," she sat on the Tyrion's desk that was soon to be hers, "Work to gain Serena's love and you can become her father. To the extent, she decides. You can stay here for that, or fail and return to your home, wherever that place is with the solid conditions you will not mock my daughter's name by fathering bastards while you are away. I'm sure you learned the way to avoid that and save the Realm from another Blackfyre rebellion. And last but not least, this time, instead of putting me to sleep like a rabid dog, use that energy in keeping your sister Sansa in line, unless you want me to remind her what and where her place is. I respect the North, even them had more faith in me than all of you. But my resolve will not wobble if my daughter's safety depends upon it."

There was something like defiance all over his face but she gave no second thoughts to it. 

"All right, then," he agreed with the plan, as she knew he will because at the end of the day, both knew it was the logical, right thing to do and he was fonded with the notion.

She made no attempt to dismiss him and move back to the balcony to stare at the Bay. 

She should've pushed for more and demand his loyalty, make him swear on his blood that he would put Serena over everyone else, but the truth is that, according to her own experience, he wouldn't do it. Tyrion told her that Sansa's children are the light of his eyes, and she has never had the desire to put him in that dilemma anyway. She was trapped in it with no other alternative, at that time, when she was alone, clinging to the only thing that seemed to offer her a home like a child caught in her mother's skirts and terrified of getting lost.

No, this time she must be enough for Serena. They had allies and people who cared for them. But, above all, her daughter had her and that Jon would never match that feeling. That truth brought Daenerys peace.

She kept looking at the river and yearning for a past where she took this path instead of allowing him to use her weakness against her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little bit too hard? The things is that too many years have passed, they are practically strangers again.


	9. Meekness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A wedding that comes very late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know why this ended being so long, I just know that I started writing it and couldn't stop.

**IX.**

**Meekness**

Jon drew a tired smile on his face when he saw his nephew and niece running down the corridor to reach him and melt into a hug that he didn't know how much he needed. Behind them, their parents approached with more stealth as the guards of the North marched in position, throwing long stares at the Unsullied stationed in each of the columns that supported the structure of the main hall of Red Keep. Men who have fought side by side saving the world from the dead, the first time, and then slaughtering King's Landing, the second. Jon felt an antagonist at that juncture.

"Uncle Jon, when are we going to meet her?" Lya asked with huge, excited eyes.

"I want to see the dragon!" Eddard required, eliciting a small wince from Sansa.

Well, Jon wasn't surprised that Sansa hadn't left anything for him to tell. She was not good at keeping secrets, he reminded himself while staring at her with discontent.

She pursed her lips in a nervous gesture and looked away to ask the guards for the servants to prepare their chambers because Harry wanted to rest.

Jon lowered his eyes back to his niece. There were other things to explain.

"Her name is Serena," he revealed to them with a strange feeling in his chest. He did not know immediately that it was pride and emotion. "You will meet her when she feels ready."

"And the dragon?" Eddard insisted again with noticeable frustration. Apparently the news of a cousin did not disturb him as much as the stories of Drogon, the black dread reborn.

In spite of the horrifying aspect of that day in King's Landing and the atrocities that the dragon caused under the yoke of Daenerys, the stories always seem to emphasize the sublime of the matter causing the magnified tragedy to lose any tangibility.

"They didn't bring it," he replied to his elder nephew whose face was dyed with disappointment. Jon offered him a consolation smile; he preferred them far away if Drogon returns.

The children continued running around Red Keep while Harry talked to him about the North and its affairs, this being the only topic of conversation they could have. He barely knew his sister's husband and has seen him rarely.

Jon didn't have much sympathy for him and in another context, he would have suggested Sansa not marry a man who had bastard children in The Vale that he would not recognize or treat as Lord Stark treated him. However, once he settled back in the Night's Watch, for Jon the matter of the kingdoms was over. He didn't want to have to do with it anymore. Sansa had to solve her affairs by herself, and she did so.

What turned the next issue to deal with a sensitive one.

"That you are going to do what?" she asked stunned after the children went to the King's solar to visit their other uncle and Harry to the chambers. "You are out of your senses!" she demanded, sitting at another end of the table to appease her growing moodiness. "Jon, we're talking about a woman whose pulse didn't tremble to slaughter thousands in one day!"

Once, the man he was would have nodded, bowed his head, and resigned to her being right. Time transformed Jon into something else. He understood that if he had hardened his determination and defended his position with her in the past, it might have contributed to a different outcome. The problem with Sansa was that she couldn't contemplate that the motives of others are legitimate as hers.

"Twelve years, Sansa," he growled, "Twelve years in exile, with my daughter beside her, fleeing anonymously and regaining her power, without even sliding her eyes to the west!"

He was shaking and Sansa was suppressing an answer, licking her lips and looking away.

"She could take Drogon and end us all if she had wanted to, many years ago. In the damn moment when..." he trailed off, thinking about the resurrection. They had treated the subject far above.

Sansa let out a deep breath that showed how at odds she was with that reality.

"They are my family," Jon tried to reason with her, lowering the combative tone in his voice.

Sansa's face constricted in an aggrieved countenance.

"We are your family," she corrected him.

"Aye," he agrees, he would never stop recognizing that. "And so I chose it when I stuck a dagger in her heart to protect them all of you. Not just the Realm," it felt terrible to admit it out loud. "However, I have a debt to them."

Actually, it was much more than that. If Sansa were the kind of understanding and the sentimental person he once thought she was, Jon would have strip things bare and ask her to consider his feelings. He had a unique opportunity to recover what he lost by choosing to protect those who at the end of the day continued living their lives without much ado. Not that he expected it to be otherwise, but for a moment he wanted to be selfish and crave to have the same as them.

"Is she demanding it from you? Is this so she can become queen?"

"Sansa," Jon pleaded, running his hand over his face, jaded, "Stop provoking her! Last time the damage didn't fall on you!"

"And is that my fault?" She questioned, "Was it me who took the dragon and slaughtered a surrendered city?"

She seemed to always hide behind that excuse to not admit that what she did was treason and that any monarch, in all his right, would have executed her as punishment.

In fact, after Varys died, Jon feared that would be her immediate destiny. He was prepared to beg Dany to take another stance, to punish her in another way. He knew that if damage befell on Sansa, that would unleash the wrath of the North and particularly of Arya. Now, looking at it in perspective, Daenerys had no options back then.

He was not stupid to ignore the fact that Sansa knew this and used everything in her favor just as a person like Cersei or Littlefinger would. Blood ties were the only thing that kept Jon in a direct relationship with her.

"Don't make me choose again," he was determined to announce, "Because I'm not going to choose you."

Her face became stone. She did not question that statement although Jon was sure that in her mind something else was being prepared.

"And Eddard? And Lya?"

And there it was, he thought. The same kind of questioning that Tyrion asked him. At least this time he was familiar with their schemes and games.

_There was no need to return to the dilemma_ , he told himself. _You just had to do things right_ , something that for Sansa was like controlling a wolf in front of the prey. Relentless.

"You protect them by not provoking her," he replied.

She leaned against the back of the chair, defeated on her own argument. And although he still didn't know what he would do in case the situation arose, Lya and Eddard had those who protected them. He would be the most detestable of men if he said with certainty that he would put their well-being over Serena's, as Daenerys herself assumed that his loyalties rested. It was in him to earn the right to contradict her.

"Okay," Sansa accepted. Although not completely. "Under one condition," and this time she moved to the seats near his. She looked him straight in the eye like when someone told one about something serious that had no deflection. "In the North, they will not accept losing a northern monarch to subjugate to a Targaryen again. Two, to be precise."

Jon saved the laugh. They already obeyed Daenerys to slaughter a city. They shall continue the example, or pay the consequences.

"You'll have to convince them, then," he replied.

"It will be easier," she continued, ignoring him, "If we don't lose our position."

"What Position?"

"A monarch from the North," then her hand joined his in a gesture he knew well, "If your daughter is elected Queen, she will need a consort. And I have a son."

Jon withdrew his hand disgusted as he moved out of his seat toward the fireplace. He brushed his hair backwards and let out a disbelieving laugh.

It was obvious that on the long road to King's Landing, that mind of hers was going to plot something up, in front of the inevitable situation where Daenerys would not leave.

She always looked for the benefit. She could never accept that she lost.

"You keep surprising me," he congratulated her on the achievement with sarcasm.

Sansa rolled her eyes.

"Do you know why she called her Serena?" she anticipated the questioning that he hadn't even planned to do.

Jon had another sarcastic response on the tip of my tongue, _of course, I don't know, because I killed her and she was revived with my daughter in a remote place of the Known World, and in twelve years she kept that distance intact so that she would not be close to me._

Before he could, she said, "Serena Stark. She married Edric Stark. Her uncle."

His breathing stopped. He did not remember that detail, if he was honest he knew more about the Targaryen kings and their tumultuous history than of his Northern ascendants.

How did Dany know about that? As far as he knows and she admitted it, once, she never had a formal education. Why in hells would she choose that name for their daughter? Was she mocking Jon?

"We are not the Targaryens but we understand sacrifices," Sansa continued speaking, "No union occurs with both parties loving it, at first but it is how our world works. Your daughter has to marry, what better way to do it with the family she does not know yet? With a child that you know will be a great man."

It was too much information to process. He was still stuck making sense of his daughter's name and her mother's intentionality.

"Daenerys won't allow it," Jon excused.

"You are her father," Sansa insisted.

"I'm barely knowing her."

"They are children. It has not to happen now."

Sansa got up and walked around the room with her lady's presence at peace. Jon hated how well she endured these political plots that seemed absurd to him until he realized that it was how it was played.

"The last heir of House Targaryen will soon be unavailable," she argued, pouring herself a glass of wine, "The other kingdoms will soon align their heirs. I have already heard the rumors that the girl looks like her mother, a few more years and we will again have tournaments and desperate men looking for her hand and her power. I am saving you a problem. "

Gods, he cursed in his mind. He didn't even finish processing the curiosity she pointed out about her name when he immediately had to become aware of that detail.

It was true. His daughter had traits that raged a resemblance to him but at first glance, it was a childlike version of Daenerys. Without a doubt, in a couple of years, there would be lots of candidates interested in marrying her. The thought instilled unsettling emotions in him.

"Just don't annoy Daenerys," Jon grunted.

* * *

Serena had spent more than one moon wandering Red Keep, but she was still lost in its long and multiple halls, ending in places where she wasn't even sure where she was. Fortunately, the Unsullied escorts always found a way back and did not panicked like her.

She reminded herself not to be so childish.

It was on one of those walks that Serena stumbled upon the image of Jon Snow and his family, the Starks.

Her mother told her about them, Children of Sansa Stark, one of the many people who harmed her in the past. A boy with dark auburn hair and the little girl with a darker one. They must truly love him to embrace him like that, she thought. And he loves them too.

They were her cousins, Serena supposed. Jon Snow's nephews. 

The notion of the Starks as her family was unpleasant. Yes, her mother made sure she knew she was partly one of them but Serena never wanted to feel that way. She was and always would be a Targaryen. 

She couldn't help feeling a certain curiosity about what her life would have been like if her father had chosen them and if Sansa Stark hadn't been a bitch with her muña. Maybe she would not be walking through a castle that boasted hers because it was built by her ancestors, trying to find the home she never had.

Maybe she would be down there, being part of that hug.

* * *

At her last wedding, Daenerys knew she was about to be subjected to great harm. She spent days crying helplessly and dreaming of terrible events that would be the prelude to her future. Alienated from reality to the point she could only sit still, she watched her own wedding happening, meek and compliant to abide by her brother's wishes, and from thereon, those of her husband. She was a girl who was thrown into the arms of a savage who raped her tirelessly that night and others, until she learned to survive and find strength, and even love, in that martyrdom. How did she seem to be in the same place, so many years later?

She has only been able to drink water all day. The simple smell of food dried her throat and waves of disgust hit her as her guts twisted. While fixing her hair, Vizi had to clean small drops of sweat off her forehead. Her hands hurt from twisting them so much.

"If this is the cost of a Crown, then I don't want it anymore," Serena said when Daenerys came to her with the announcement.

It was far more complicated than that, she knew. She didn't take into account her daughter's desire when she agreed on this plan but in her safety. Tyrion was right, in his awful way, that she promised stability so many time that Serena came to feel they needed to secure their lives by pursuing the restoration of what was stolen from them. 

She was a fierce one, tired of fleeing from the sheeps when they were the dragons, Dany knew. The desperate type of thoughts she had in the past and that led her to make terrible choices. 

"We'll make the best out of it, my love," Daenerys answered with a comprehensive half-smile that didn't reach her eyes. 

Dany stood up and watched the ivory gown she was wearing. She didn't even bothered in getting the seamstress and just took the garment out of her wardrobe. She can't remember where she got this one, or in which port exactly. It didn't matter just as this all businesses mounted in the sole purpose to protect Serena. That both implicated parties knew. 

Despite Tyrion's suggestion to wait longer to invite personalities from Essos and her associates of Great Black Company, Daenerys flatly refused, knowing that was all the time needed for some greedy and brave lord to create chaos. They had the members of the Great Council, and that was enough.

Besides, she wanted to take Tyrion's position and start working, the only thing that took her nervousness off her.

The ceremony would take place in the sept within Red Keep and out of respect for the Northerners, they would also proceed with the traditional ceremony of the Old Gods. Tyrion asked if they should call any priest of the red god, which Daenerys ruled out. 

Tyrion insisted that for one night they intended to walk down the hall as marriage like the others.

"Men and women have gone to bed as strangers for centuries," he said.

Of course, but they were not, nor was such a task necessary for either of them. Marriage consummated or not, Serena was already there.

However, Dany agreed to at least show it. She would walk with him to the adjoined bedchambers and that would be the end of the mess. Grey Worm would be waiting for her on the other side and she would be safe. 

He won't hurt you, a voice objected to her stoic mind. But wouldn't he? Dany found no answer to that question. He only needed a few minutes last time, what if it's all it takes now? Could he steal Serena from her? She couldn't be sure of whatever he's up to but she was certain Serena would not bear the thought.

Dany took another breath of fresh air.

"They can't harm me, anymore," she reassured herself. "He can't harm me, anymore."

* * *

On the morning of the wedding, Jon was already awake beholding the sunrise on his balcony when Tyrion and some servants barged in to prepare him for the event.

Jon asked for privacy to put on the groom's suit, leather breeches, black velvet doublet with gold filigree, thigh-high boots, and a silver chain with carved wolves Sansa sent.

"May I explain the procedure?" Tyrion asked.

"The sept. The Godswood. We marry. We feast. The end," he snorted back an answer.

"Not exactly," Tyrion said quietly, "Even if Kings and Queens have been married without affection before, especially the Targaryens, you both must simulate a certain level of commitment."

"Speak clearly," Jon indicated. Although he understood his subtle implications, they made him even more nervous. His softer words wouldn't soothe his jitters.

"You have to pretend to consummate the marriage."

Jon was putting on his boots when he stopped and looked at him with a hardened face.

"We are not..." He could not finish that sentence. It wasn't right to talk that way in front of him.

If there was something that bothered him greatly, it was that he still had to talk about Dany with him. The only reason he continued to do so was because Daenerys choose to deal with him that way. Leaving Tyrion in the middle was a mistake in the past, and now she seemed to use that mistake as a shield against his person.

"I know it's a complicated and fucked up situation," Tyrion admits with discouragement, "Nobody says you have to perform the act itself, I'm sure Grey Worm will make you an Unsullied before you can..."

"Tyrion!"

"Bedding. That is enough and provides enough merriment for the attendees."

He didn't like that idea at all. Having a lot of people undressing them and screaming obscenities was too much.

"Does she agree with this?"

He could not think so.

"She will walk to the adjoined chambers next to you, and once inside, she will go to hers. Grey Worm will be waiting for her on the other side."

It couldn't be any other way, he thought, finishing putting on his boots.

"This feels bad," he complained, dumbfounded in a consumptive feeling between discomfort and embarrassment.

He didn't know how the fuck he should feel. Embarrassed is the first thing that came to mind. Penitent, the second. 

Jon said to himself he had to cool his head and his heart, just as Dany did. This was not a happy moment, he shouldn't feel the slightest contentment. Neither of them held affection for him and this was a painful act for Daenerys.

_Mayhaps with time_...but as soon as that idea hit his mind he had to back up.

Gone was the love. Gone were those eyes who stared at him as something magnificent and her only hope amidst desolation and betrayal. He hadn't realized until this point how much he'd missed that stare. Now it feels more like a pending issue that has to be resolved, according to the little interested look she throws at him and her frivolous and impersonal comments that constantly seek to define the place that corresponds to each one of them. It shouldn't surprise him, she had a daughter from him and didn't bother looking for him in all those years. It was obvious that for her, the existence of him was not relevant. 

"Sometimes the right thing feels that way," Tyrion tried to bring some solace. "You are not the first miserable groom."

* * *

There was a tense moment when she appeared at the end of the hallway leading to the sept. Everything seemed so immediate that she didn't remember even when she left her chamber. The guests were inside the sept, so only Jon and Tyrion were waiting for her outside, and of course, behind her, Torgo Nudho, who was incredible muffled with the whole situation, did not depart her side.

Tyrion had a thightened face, she knew he had a joke on the tip of his tongue about the fact that her only male kin was also the man who would have to be at the altar. The good, old Targaryen way returned, he would say. 

There would be no maiden’s cloak or any kind of cloak because Daenerys was not becoming the lady of, under the protection of. In fact, Jon was the last person to whom they should assign that task.

If she did not want to expose her problems, she had to do this quick and shallow. She had no intention of either of them knowing of her weakness, of what both of them had conspired to take away from her.

Dany squeezed Torgo Nudho's arm to reassure him and proceeded to accept the arm Jon offered her, without looking at him and ignoring how dizzy she began to feel being so close to him, returning to a touch that, in the past, was terminal.

She thought of Serena. It was too much for her so Dany allowed her to be absent and wait for the feast. She didn't like to wear dresses so she would have more time to get used to the corset and remember to wear lady shoes.

She thought of Serena when she was a little baby. In all those journey on ships and the many places where they were together, only them. She left behind the images of the not so happy moments, like the night of the storm. No, that she pushed back.

When Daenerys returned to herself the Septon was already in front of them speaking something she had not even heard. 

"...My lords, my ladies, we stand here in the sight of gods and men to witness the union of man and wife. One flesh, one heart, one soul, now and forever."

Is Jon who helped her lift her hand for the Septon to tied them together. 

"Let it be known that Daenerys of House Targaryen and Jon of House Targaryen and House Stark are one heart, one flesh, one soul. Cursed be he who would seek to tear them asunder," the old man pointed at them, "Look upon each other and say the words."

"Father, Smith, Warrior, Mother, Maiden, Crone, Stranger..." both chanted before splitting off.

"I am hers and she is mine. From this day, until the end of my days." 

"I am his and he is mine. From this day, until the end of my days."

That sounds like a lot of time, Dany complained in her mind.

The ribbon was unraveled and the moment she most feared came. If she could overcome this, she could face anything, she told herself.

It was simple during the vows because she focused her eyes on a distant point behind Jon and avoided his. She would not be the first one to chant those vows in vain.

Now she would have to close them.

“With this kiss I pledge my love, I take you for my lord and husband."

"With this kiss I pledge my love and I take you for my lady and wife.”

You are my queen now and always, she remembered as Jon lowered his lips to hers in a short kiss that barely touched them but had enough intensity to return her to that moment.

Her entire body began to spin around and she heard a high-pitched sound drown out the applause that followed the end of the ceremony, as he turned them around and both faced an audience that looked in amazement at the last vestiges of the recently resurrected House Targaryen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm avoiding writing the ceremony of the Old Gods because that one is mostly about the cloak and here there's no cloak. 
> 
> And yes, Dany suffers from anxiety. Should I tag that? 
> 
> Next chapter: the feast.


	10. Lord and Lady Targaryen of the Seven Kingdoms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A feast in the Red Keep

**X.**

**Lord and Lady Targaryen of the Seven Kingdoms.**

It felt odd for Jon to hear his name associated with two powerful houses he would only dream about being part of when he was a child. But the whole situation was strange. 

He'd asked not being called Aegon, out of respect for his late half-brother of the same name. 

At all times, Jon avoided eye contact with Dany. She was so beautiful that it was difficult for his eyes to not stick to her image. She was already stunning but today, with her silver locks freed and falling down her back, shoulders and breast...it was breathtaking. Kissing her reignited something in him he thought lost and dead. He shouldn't felt that way, especially because she remained standoffish. She was there, in her physical presence, but her mind was elsewhere. There was not even strength in the grip of her hand. Jon understood there, how difficult it was for her.

He wanted to ask her where Serena was but it was obvious that she wouldn't give him that answer. 

The ceremony at Godswood proved easier without the cloak. There was no one to hand Dany over so she just said her name in a tone so cold that it could have frozen his blood. Needless to say, he didn't carry her to to the feast.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jon could catch the tension in Sansa's face. He didn't know the rest of those people. The guests, however, did seem fascinated with what was happening. Not every day there was a wedding between two members of a house that was extinct not too long ago. It was that or the fact that Daenerys seemed ethereal. Or both.

_Serena Stark_ , he thought as they walked together in silence towards the great hall, where the feast would take place, he always some steps behind her and Grey Worm just by her side like a warning sign. _She married her uncle Edric Stark_. And Jon has just married his aunt. It was not even in the least relevant.

Why, of all the names she could pick, she chose that one.

A wave of bitterness hit him as he thought about her away, raising their child alone, who knows for how long. Serena mentioned have born in Meereen and Jon knows from Tyrion they were not there for a long time or anywhere else, always running to avoid raising suspicion of who they were. He imagined her waking up from death as he did, with the same feeling of pain and grief he felt when he remembered how vilely he was betrayed. Did she know she was with his child before that? Why didn't she tell him? _Because in your last days together you act out with her_ , he reprimanded himself. 

And now they are married. They have a daughter. The promise they made is in perpetuity and he intended to comply just as he meant with his second oath to the Night's Watch. Though, Jon did not know what this marriage, beyond Serena wellbeing, meant for her. 

He knew that ten years was too long to hope there was no other person in her heart. They knew each other for such a short time and theirs ended so badly, that it was naive not to assume she eventually moved on with someone else. Because of his defensive and jealous ways, one would think that person is Grey Worm. The thought seemed terrible for him. 

Jon couldn't help thinking that at some point, she will hold paramours. 

Even when the idea bothered him, he couldn't help recognizing that she was in her right and that his main concern should be Serena and not her. He had to earn his daughter's trust and respect because Jon was sure that that was the bond that mattered most.

At any rate, for Dany, this marriage was a necessary sacrifice and was not interested in recast the same in something else.

* * *

They sat at a large table a few meters away with an Unsullied soldier placed in the middle of them, a few steps back. Physical contact was no longer required so Daenerys thanked her mind for behaving for the time being. 

Something about everything had a melancholic connotation, a feeling that it was so empty that neither of them could force the smallest smile. From henceforth, their lives were united, because even if he eventually left, he would still be her husband and she would be his wife. She would have to take it into account in everything he does from now on if she wanted Serena to be safe.

She anticipated that possibility, the one where he leaves. Daenerys didn't think he would stay too long. This was not his place. Unlike Serena and herself, Jon has only known the North, the rest of the world was strange for him.

That is another reason why she doesn't want Serena to get too fond of him, he will leave. Sooner or later, he will leave.

Was she being too paranoid? she wondered. She barely knew the man, after all, just enough to know that only two things mattered to him, his honor and his duty. Whatever form they take. Perhaps Serena would import enough for him to find his duty and honor in protecting her.

No, Dany scolded herself, aware that her determination was being softened once more. She cannot afford to place any hope on him, no matter that deep down she knew he is not inherently bad.

She sipped a little more water and kept reciting numbers in her mind so as not to focus more on those thoughts.

One of the royal guards announced the arrival of Bran. The guests, including them, got up to receive him although Dany felt uncomfortable doing so. She had never declared fealty to Brandon, to his House or to the Crown of the Seven Kingdoms. The king would not demand it, she knew it. However, she felt dwarfed in a certain way.

After King Bran, several other Unsullied walked in, including Brown Fox. Her heart raced. Behind him, Serena appeared for the first time in the sight of those people's eyes. She put herself in one blue dress they got on their last visit to Lys. Daenerys had bought it for her thinking that maybe she would start taking her with her to the Company's banquets, knowing how isolated Serena was beginning to feel. A decision she pulled out later. 

Seeing her there was like holding her back in her arms the first time they placed her there. So dear and precious to her that Dany feared that those who did not see her in the same way, would want to take her away from her.

She would only be hers, she had promised herself in Meereen, and so it was until they found them.

* * *

The last time her mother allowed her to attend a feast was in Lys, however, as soon as people got excited about her appearance, Muña ordered Torgo Nudho to take her to her chambers and not lose sight of her. She did not understand what had happened until much later when the horrors that were lived in Essos stopped being hidden under the veil of innocence for her.

There were many things that she had to clear up earlier than other children, Serena knew.

If I had been a princess, I would have gone to many of these, she thought, so many she would be fed up with them by now. And it is not that she enjoyed them, as for example, she did with those simple celebrations in the streets of Free Cities. Serena was just tired of not knowing who were the people who considered her existence so detestable that they were able to send murderers for her and her mother. She didn't want to keep hiding from them.

She looked around the Great Hall, smaller now that it was full of guests, and her eyes fell on the first image she recognized: Muña. She was as beautiful as ever in her white bridal gown in which Serena never thought she would see her. Her loose hair reminded her of summer afternoons touring the grasslands outside Meereen to hunt with Drogon. She rarely wore it that way.

Next to her was Jon Snow, so elegant that the image was out of place. He smiled at her when he saw her and she was about to do the same when out of the corner of her eye, Sansa Stark's red hair caught her attention. Up close she was even more beautiful, slender and neat.

The rest of the people went through her inspection inadvertently, maybe because of her nerves or to the fact that except for her mother and the Unsullied, they all disliked Serena in a certain way.

She advanced with her chin up as she saw her mother walking in her meetings. Her shoes were hurting her feet and she almost stumbled midway, causing a soft rumor of laughter that made her cheeks blush.

She reached the seat next to her mother and took her place, thinking that if she wanted Drogon could destroy Red Keep for the second time.

"I love you, you did very well," Muña whispered in her ear, taking her hand to squeeze it with hers, a gesture from her that denoted the same nervousness Serena felt. 

"You're good?" she asked with real concern. She knew that Muña was the strongest person in the world but this seemed too much for anyone.

Her mother smiled.

"Better now that you're with me."

She thought that people were going to ignore her but as soon as the feast continued, many guests came forward to greet them and congratulate Lord and Lady Targaryen of the Seven Kingdoms. Someone also called her Lady Targaryen and it sounded odd.

"Can't they just call me Serena?" she asked her mother, who gave her a half-smile indicating it was part of Westeros' customs. "And we can't do new customs?"

"We can't even make them stop fighting each other," Jon Snow interrupted from the other side of her mother, jokingly. Seeing the surprised faces of her mother and hers, he cleared his throat and added, "Is it the first time you attend a feast?"

Her mother leaned against the back of the chair so as not to interfere with the conversation, leaving a greater view of Jon Snow wearing a chain around his chest with wolves carved into it. It was nice.

"Mother has taken me to only one in Lys, but they started asking for my hand and I had to retire."

"What?"

He seemed so horrified at the idea that she saw something like shame on her mother's face. Why should it be? It wasn't like he allowed that. Serena thought her mother would say something else but she drank her glass with water and drank from it, cutting off the matter.

"If you feel uncomfortable, at any moment, we can leave," Jon Snow offered.

"Can I meet my cousins?"

The question came up so quickly that she sounded almost excited to do it when she was still really nervous and full of curiosity. She had noticed that the two children were nearby, causing a great uproar with their loud northern voices like Jon's.

"Of course!" Jon said, more enthused than a few moments ago.

Jon made the attempt to get up but her mother stopped him instantly. Serena stirred in surprise.

"You have to ask someone to call them, you can't get up to bring them," she said in a clear and severe tone, the same one she used to scold Serena when she spent much time training than attending her lessons. A mother's tone.

As soon as she made sure that he would not get up from his seat, Muña moved her hand away from his arm and rested them back in her lap.

"Sorry, I don't..." he began to say but before he could continue, Muña was already ordering one of the Unsullied to bring his nephews.

Serena sat back in her seat and took a deep breath. It didn't have to be such a difficult matter, she cheated herself.

Soon, the children were there. A small girl of dark and big, grey eyes and the boy with a boring expression and the same hair of his mother. 

"Lord Eddard and Lyanna of House Stark," Jon announced them. "They are my nephews and your cousins, Serena," and he then looked at his family and said, "Edd, Lya, she is Serena. She is..." he suddenly shut up. 

Serena remembered that she warned him not to call her his daughter. That they could be distant cousins. But he has married her mother so whatever she said it's irrelevant now.

"May I know you ages, my Lord and Lady?" Muña saved the awkward moment. 

The girl first eyed her uncle in seek of his approval. But the boy just spoke his answer. 

"I'll be ten and one in a moon's turn."

"I am eight, my lady," the girl's response was accompanied by the courtesy of someone who was already into the Westerosi customs. 

Muña stared back at her with curiosity. 

"Won't you tell your cousins your age?"

Serena cleared her throat. 

"I am ten and one."

They seemed impressed by the expression in their faces.

"You looked older!" the boy called Eddard shouted. 

People often told her that because she had a habit of imitating the strange and complicated words her mother used in her conversations. In addition she had to read many books in the common tongue to understand the language without ever having been to Westeros. The children of the North read books? She couldn't help wondering. However, Edd didn't know her at all or heard her speak yet. Not at all. Then, the comment took another dimension and she felt herself shrink in her seat. Maybe that was the reason why those men asked for their Serena's hand in Lys?

"Edd..." Jon called him with some disturbance in his voice. 

"Very well," Muña interrupted, "I think you should return to your mother, kids."

They both bow politely before returning to their seats.

"I'm sorry for that," Serena heard Jon saying but she was focused on hiding tears that wanted to spilled out of her eyes.

"They are children," her mother replied.

* * *

After cutting the pigeon cake, Serena asked for a moment alone.

Dany found her leaning on the parapet walk facing Blackwater Way; Brown Fox beside her, guarding her in silence. He cleared his throat to alert Serena and it was enough for her to turn around and observe her mother in the threshold of the entrance. Daenerys noticed she was brooding, a gesture from Jon she inherited perforce.

Brown Fox moved a few steps to the side, though never so far away to leave them unprotected. 

"Beautiful sight, isn't?"

Serena sighed.

"It reminds me of the Long Bridge."

Volantis, Dany thought, the place where they always returned. 

"You were remarkable today, my love," she tried to encouraged her. Her mood soothed after the meeting with her cousins. Just as his mother, the boy lacked of first meeting courtesy. 

"Muña, why those people trated me so kindly if they want me dead?"

Her interrogation baffled Daenerys.

"Not all of them want you..." she stopped herself; her daughter could seem so mature and experienced at times but she was still a little girl forced to grow up sooner than any other kids, "Serena, people like us, we are not like the rest. You know that, right? Our power makes us different and most of the people don't like what's different and some other are scared. That's why Drogon can't come here, not yet," the thought of her son made Dany hurt, "What I did, it was terrible. I'd wish I could take it back but it won't happen. All I can do to repair some of the damage and making their lives better so they would see that's better to be by our side than against us."

She still was confused. Dany lifted a hand to caress her cheek. She would always be her baby, but Daenerys realized that she was becoming her own person and would soon be more exposed to all kind of dangers.

"My priority it's and will always be you." 

"Then promise me something," Serena eyes looked at hers with despair. "The next time you have to choose between your life and his life, do not choose him. Do never choose him again." 

That took Dany aback. She sounded very scared as if the wedding had made her believe that Daenerys was starting a new life that didn't include her. But it wasn't that, Dany knew. It was that resentment against herself for having been weakened by Jon and his false love that Serena consumed from the womb. It was an unfair conclusion because Jon has not given yet his version, but Dany could never object to that conlusion when her own heart could not afford a diferent response.

" _I don't think he's ever loved you,_ " Serena told her once after the talk where Daenerys revealed the truth of the events in her last days in Westeros. She tried to get all the details but that only worsened the perception of Serena. " _Or might you loved him more_."

In the eyes of his daughter, Daenerys was a victim of him.

"What makes you think that's even a possibility?"

"You two are married now, and he already hurt you once. Just promise me you won't leave, ever. That we, the both of us, are a family and it will never change."

It was not a hard choice to make, Daenerys thought, before embracing her little one and kissing her forehead.

"I promise you. Forever and always."

* * *

"... it doesn't matter if it wasn't your intention. You were rude and she didn't do anything to you," Jon continued scolding his nephew who shrugged in his seat, rolling his eyes at every word that came out of his mouth. His mother's apprentice.

  
"Let it be, Jon. He was just being honest. The girl has to get used to receiving opinions of all kinds regarding her appearance. It's not as if he had told her she was horrendous," Sansa tried to soften him but a look on his part was enough for her to leave the matter in his hands.

  
"I think she's very, very pretty," Lya gave her opinion as she fiddled with the embroidery of her dress. "Will she have tea with me, Uncle Jon? I can show her my dolls, I brought many from the North!"

  
Jon smiled but wasn't sure what to answer.

Edd snorted.

"Girls like her don't play with silly dolls, Lya."

"She's your age, and you play with your stupid wooden soldiers," she retorted, causing the boy to flush with annoyance.

"They are for strategies!"

Jon couldn't avoid but asking,

"What do you mean girls like her?"

His tone sounded severe.

"Older girls, the ones who are doing Ladies' things all day like mother."

"So that's what you mean? What does Serena look older is that she doesn't look like a girl who plays with dolls?" It'd be a relief for Jon.

"And because she's pretty. The girls of my age don't look so pretty and neat. The older boys were watching her."

How did he not realize those things? Jon wondered. Of course that was what Edd was trying to say. He remembered what Serena mentioned about Lys and her blood boiled.

"Does your cousin look pretty, Edd?" Sansa teased both, her son and Jon. 

"Sansa, stop it," Jon grunted.

He looked up to see Daenerys back in her seat with Serena at her side. Gods, he cursed returning to his place. The feast was already in full swing and they both agreed in a brief exchange to save the invitations to dances to appear more reserved. He hoped she didn't believe he had broken the deal.

However, from Dany's expression, she seemed to have her thoughts busy on other issues.

Serena smiled briefly before returning to her elegant and formal posture that reminded Jon of the image of Dany sitting on the throne of Dragonstone.

"My dear goodbrother!" Harry voice resounded in the whole room, making the instruments stop playing. "For Lord Targaryen and Lady Targaryen of the Seven Kingdoms and their little dragon right there! May they don't burn many things" he was extremely drunk. "You know what?" His eyes darkened to Daenerys, in a way Jon found menacing, "I think it's time for bedding!"

The two had been very aware that the time would come however, when he did, they both found themselves uncomfortable and stunned.

Her guards moved the long spears in warning. Jon realized that Grey Worm was also caught off guard and made an attempt to stand in front of Daenerys before she, with the same stoic gesture with which she held Jon's arm, stopped him to whisper something in his ear.

As soon as he thought about how to silence Harry and postpone the moment to talk with Dany about how to carry on the event in the least cumbersome way possible, he had the hands of women he barely knew dragging him out of his seat. Jon wanted to get away from the invasion but when he saw if Daenerys was doing the same, he lost his concentration. Definitely, she was wrapped in the men's grip.

By the time they reached the long hallway that led them to those adjoined chambers, Jon no longer had his doublet, nor the wolf chain. He did not allow anything else to be taken from him. Behind him came Daenerys without the upper part of her dress and matted hair. The image get on his nerves, and he'd to hold back the need to growl the men away. Apparently her gown had a complicated tie behind, that made it impossible to finish be unfasten. Jon noticed that her eyes were watery and lost, they didn't focus on anything just as in the Sept.

"Bring a dagger to cut these damn ties!" someone said but it was at that moment that she emerged from her state of confusion.

"Do not!" she declared with a shout that shook the audience.

Right there, Jon decided he did not want to wait any longer to end the ridiculous affair.

He reached for her hand to push themselves in the direction of the chamber and begin the walk. The ribaldry they heard only made his heart rumble more against his ribcage. 

Dany took a few steps ahead of him when they were close to the gates and hurried to enter before him. He hated seeing her like that, he felt so bad about himself for provoking that kind of reaction. He asked himself if that was the way he would feel seeing himself alone with his murderers. He did not allow all his traitors to live as long as Daenerys did with hers.

Once inside, she ran to the end of the room where the other door was. Jon supposed that was all, now he wouldn't see her until she summoned him again to keep up appearances. He still wanted to have a few words with her about Serena. He really wanted to know why she chose to call her that if she had no reason to care for the Starks. Why call the last offspring of her Targaryen by a Stark name?

The sound of the doorknob being handled forced him out of his thoughts. The door to the other bedchamber was locked.

  
"Shit," Daenerys sputtered, and he thought that was the first time he heard her curse.

"There must be a key around here," Jon commented, approaching a desk near the door, which caused a sudden movement of her part against the door as if he had approached to attack her.

"Dany ..." Jon whispered calmly, raising his hands and walking a few steps back. "Dany, I'm not going to hurt you."

Her face was pale like she'd seen a ghost. Her chest rose and fell with intensity and Jon thought he saw a few drops of sweat coming down her forehead.

She was terrified of him. That caused a wave of disgust against himself.

"Sorry, I ..." he walked further back to put as much distance as possible between them. "Look in the drawer, the key may be there. If it isn't, I will stay on this side until it is safe for you to leave without raising suspicion."

He did not look back when he walked to the bed and sat at an opposite end, turning his back on her. That way she was the one with the advantage of him off guard. How did they get to this point? The person he once knew would never have shown so...fragile in the face of what she considered an enemy. The problem was not his enemies, he concluded.

He heard that she moved and searched in the drawers. She found the key and without wasting any more time, lunged at the door and began her exit. Before she did, Jon took courage and asked,

"Why Serena?"

Daenerys stopped dead before finishing closing the door on the other side. Grey Worm didn't seem to have arrived either, otherwise he would have tear down the door Jon supposed.

"What?" She returned the question, startled.

  
"Why did you call her Serena?" Jon repeated.

He turned around to assess the expression on her face. She had arched eyebrows and a half-open mouth. He thought that she would close the door and ignore him, however, she stayed there thoughtfully before answering,

"It was Missandei who searched in Winterfell archives for filial unions between the Starks at my request. I thought it would be necessary to argue in favor of..." she did not have to continue explaining for him to understand. "She liked that name. She told me it meant the same thing in several languages. Serenity."

That was the last thing they talked about before she locked the door and walked away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Halfway through the writing of this I began to think that it would be a bit rushed just to throw the characters to experience extreme feelings (hate, love) when they barely know each other. From experience I can say that it is not so easy to force a father-daughter relationship, which is supposed to be a bond formed out of habit and fondness, things one experience from the begging of the existence and this is not the case. So, Serena, for now, only feels discomfort and curiosity. The more personal their relationship is becomes, the more personal the damage will be. 
> 
> With Daenerys it's more complicated, I think there will be a chapter about the moment of her resurrection and a plot twist that I'm still working on. 
> 
> I hope to end this with 20 chapters max.


	11. Bound To Happen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dany starts taking care of stuff.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry but this escalated out of my control. I used to read long fics and wonder how can someone write so much and now I understand. At the beginning, I started with four or five chapters because is how the story came to me, I didn't make any plan. I just have like, the idea of the main points and the ending. So I believed it would be shorter than this. I'm so so sorry if you feel deceived by this, I will still try to end this in 20 or 25 chapters max.

**XI.**

**Bound To Happen**.

After the painful moment in the adjoined chambers, Grey Worm found Daenerys coiled into a corner of the room, almost faint and staring at the opposite wall. It was the first night she did not go to the tower where Serena rested to make sure she was safe and sound before moving to her own bed. A Dothraki infusion to help fall asleep the suffered mind was supplied to her, and she did not wake up until the next day, yearning to know if Serena was well.

Even in the confusion, her first and last thoughts were always on her daughter.

With the affair of the wedding dealt, Daenerys had no choice but to converge with the day to day and assume her new responsibilities, that is, try to give a solution to the many problems that the Realm was going through. One of the main current problems was the internal blockages on the main roads that made it difficult to transfer food from one commune to another, and assaults by bandits who took advantage of the situation. She remembered that in Meereen they had suffered a similar situation.

  
Before fully advocate her work, for which she would have a last and necessary meeting with Tyrion Lannister, which she hoped would be their last goodbye, King Bran summoned her to his solar.

  
Daenerys was interested in knowing how much help he could provide. Tyrion mentioned that the only reason why lords stayed in line, is that Bran could anticipate his movements when necessary. The problem was that they did not behave among themselves. Bran knew many things, but he would only talk about those he deemed important.

  
"Let's talk about Drogon," was how the King began the discussion that morning. Daenerys paled.

"He is far," she replied.

“He is a dragon," he smiled, lifeless, "He can be here at any time.”

She gulped, trying to keep the pace of her heartbeats. 

“I’m aware of how reckless it would be to bring him back to King’s Landing.”

“Who decides that? You or Serena?”

Dany knew then, he was certain with his implications. 

"I think I can understand it now," Bran said, watching her carefully.

"What thing?"

"Why the visions." He turned around to see at his guard, Podrick Payne she remembered him. He understood he'd take his leave. Once he was out, Bran looked at Daenerys again, "You never thought what your life would have been like without Robert's rebellion...how could your reign have been?"

Obviously, she did. It's the only thing that has been constant in her life. But that was not a conversation she was going to have with this man.

"I wouldn't have been a queen in the first place," she assured. 

“You don't know that. You were a pure Targaryen. You would probably have ended up married to Aegon, son of Elia.”

"But it didn't happen."

"But it didn't happen," he agreed, "And hundreds of thousands perished," he was talking as if he were thinking it at the same time. As if his thoughts hadn't filtered. "I am rarely asked to intercede."

"Who ask you?"

“The visions. I saw Serena sitting on a throne, so I know she will be queen.”

Dany sighed. 

"In these visions, how old is she?"

"It's not that old, but it's definitely not now. She is still a little girl and her main motivation is to retake what was taken from you. She reminds me of her mother. ”

"You could have left us alone."

“It would not have lasted too long. A great power like that never rests. That is why Jon did what he did, right? He did not kill the dragon, but the one who rode him. And so your mount faded away.”

Hearing the words aloud enlarge the void in her core.

“I can perceive in your emotions that you think the same as me. You are uncomfortable with the notion that she could end up in the same place you did before."

"My daughter is not me."

"The dragon is always a dragon, the difference is in who rides it. I think many people could be Daenerys Targaryen if they had the chance to ride a dragon. Is she aware of her connection with Drogon?"

Dany's breathing intensified. 

"She is."

Bran stared beyond her like musing over her answer. There was little to hide, and she knew he was proving her.

"When did it happen?" it sounded more of a thought for himself, because he, himself provided the answer, “It was before her birth…during the journey to Volantis. She stayed alive longrr than you," he spoke fascinated for the first time, "Drogon sensed her when you were still dead."

"I just know that I woke up and Drogon no longer responded to me in the same way."

"Your ancestors laid eggs in their children's cribs to intertwine the lives forever," his eyes were unfocused, "It seems to also work the other way around. Really curious."

Dany felt exhausted, once again.

"What do you want from Serena?" she asked to know. She was demanding, actually.

"Help her reach her destiny," he gave his response, “She already has the advantage of having you. Something that neither Jon nor you had when growing up. But it is not enough, there is pain, there is resentment and there is coarseness in her.”

"Then why make her queen?"

"A Targaryen alone in the world is a terrible thing," he mused, "By fair means or foul, that destiny is already hers and bound to happen. I know that you also prefer it to happen by fair."

He was right. All Daenerys wanted was for Serena to be safe, even if that meant keeping her away from her worst impulses. That was the reason she didn't let her mount Drogon, ever. It was an unavoidable situation for the future.

"I must assume my new position," Dany finished the meeting, standing with an earnest expression, "Shall you name me?"

Bran stared at her with eyes that recognized what she was about to do next.

"Just take Tyrion's pin when you bid him goodbye."

* * *

Tyrion knew that his role and importance expired that day and that it would be one chance in a thousand that he would leave Red Keep alive. It was that awareness of his situation that led him to give in to the impulse to try to reunite two souls in pain and close the door of their marital chamber to prove that there was still something there.

He saw it especially in Jon, the way he still looked at her with hankering. And although Daenerys was more reluctant, sometimes her gaze would slide to him and in acknowledgment of a very buried and dusty feeling. The fact that Jon was still alive was the great show of love on her part.

"How was the wedding night? Endearing?" he faltered in the office of the hand where Daenerys already took possession of his former desk. She squinted at him. "I shall assume by your expression that no reconciliation has happened." He sat in front of her and went straight to the flagon to pour his last taste of sweet Arbor Gold. "He still loves you, you know."

"He doesn't," she objected. 

"No, of course not. I suppose he stares at you longingly because he's hopeful for a successful marriage alliance," he said before sipping the wine that he welcomed in his mouth with pleasure. It tasted even sweeter.

"Lust, is not love," Daenerys pointed out, excelling his own conviction with a pearl of wisdom acquired with the aging and experience, "You know what I never understood? You should have told me that. You should've been the one making me notice that a simple attraction, was not love. Instead of experimenting with the onslaught of falsehood."

Oh, he thought about it. Jon was not like any of the other men that lusted for her. 

"You wouldn't have listened to me," Tyrion dissented, slurping his senses away.

Her face fashioned with disbelief.

"I listened to you when you suggested raiding Casterly Rock," she remembered for him, "I listened to you with that stupid idea to negotiate with your sister," she added, at he felt a sting of resentment, as she continued, "I listened to you when you told Jon Snow was a good man. I listened to you until the very last moment when the bells rang."

Tyrion grimaces.

"You didn't listen to me, then."

"No, I didn't," Dany leans against the back of the chair and contemplates it, solemn. "Because you didn't listen to me when I asked you to not fail me again, and you liberated your brother to have the woman that killed my child and best friend, alive and safe."

"You slaughtered a city because I failed you?"

"Because I have nothing but fear," she drew a sly smile on her face, just for him, "So I embraced it." But then, as if she has remembered what happened next, she soured the mood, "I scared the wrong people, I guess." Dany stood up and walked through the room until she went to the bookshelf, where she took the heavy tome called A Song of Ice And Fire and opened it. "I was reading about the Great Council of the year 305 A.C. My favorite part is when Samwell Tarly suggests people should choose their authorities and everyone laughed at the idea," she shifted through the pages, "I let the people in Meereen chose their own leaders," she murmured with increasing bitterness flooding Tyrion's senses. "Did Sansa laughed too? She called me a tyrant just moments before."

Tyrion started feeling fuddled but still, he tried to come up with a reasonable response.

"If the people judge you not over your greatest crime, then you shall move on, too. Leave the past behind. You had almost everything you always dreamed of," his breathing grew unsteady, "You and I, we both know he is a good man. You'll find the way to be happy. If not for yourselves, for that daughter you shared. Your life's not over."

Dany scoffed.

"You are my queen, now and always, that's what he said to me before thrusting his knife," she recalled for him. "I don't want to be his queen," she declared closing the book, and returning to her seat, "I don't want to be anybody's queen."

His throat sealed and he had to support his head against the desk, hearing her words while his own blood poured out of his mouth, nose, and eyes. Tyrion knew then, it was a relief that at least she did it by deceiving him with a conversation. 

"Whatever desire, faith and hope my heart held died with me on a cold floor. When I returned, I had nothing. Everything I fought for was gone. Everything. Taken away from me for the man I loved. The man I believed that loved me back," her tone sounded embittered. "Though, that was my mistake," she recognized, "When I woke up from the darkness that's death, I lost the last thing. My bond to Drogon was gone." 

He tried to move a little to have a last glance of her face. The horrendous pain halted him.

"Serena died after me, so he bonded with her, and we both came back, he chose her."

Gods, Tyrion cursed in his mind with the little awareness left.

"She has a fierce soul...she met death before life. I see it. And it scares me sometimes. I'll try to make my best for her but," she clicked her tongue, "If someday, she decides to take Drogon and spark off hell over the Seven Kingdoms, I'll be there, killing whoever dares to stand in her way." He heard her voice closer, she was sitting on the desk, by his side, watching him live his last moments. "Because that's family, now I know. As you protected Cersei until the very end, as Jon protected Sansa and Arya until the very end...I'll do the same for her. Whoever that person is. Starting for the one who can rekindle those ideas in people's heads. Farewell, Tyrion. May the whores miss you."

* * *

The sound of the sailors' obscene screams filled the harbor with a routine indifference that Jon received as a reminder that outside the walls of Red Keep, there was a world that didn't give a damn about what was going on in there.

"Others take me," Ser Davos shouted at the sight of the man he had not seen in over a decade, "I thought I'll never see you again," 

"I thought I'll never leave the Wall again," Jon concurred, allowing himself the glimmer of a smile.

"Look at you, lad," the old man observed at him through and through, "Married with a child," he then approached his hear with a smirk on his aged face, "A girl...they said they troubling."

"Especially when you are her murderer."

That statement soured a pleasant mood.

"Her name is Serena," Jon couldn't contain himself to talk about her, "She got Dany's hair and my eyes. And a lot more of Dany's."

They were walking back to the Red Keep when Davos stopped their pace to speak clearly.

"Don't punish yourself with those thoughts," he instilled. "You didn't know about her when it happened," his energy was the same but his body testified the waning of his life. "It'll be difficult at first, but time will heal the scars. The most important thing it's that you have them both."

"I must focus on Serena," Jon clarified to Ser Davos and reminded himself. "Dany just did this out of duty. We are not a real married couple."

Jon didn't know if telling him how frightened she was of him their wedding night. He still felt demeaned by it.

"Time will decide that," Davos jabbered with optimism. 

"She already decided it," Jon couldn't accept any hope. Himself didn't feel worthy of it. "I think it's better this way."

"Tell that to your face," he jested, "And to your good heart."

They both stood up to watch the Bay in the same place Jon stood once to see her fleet leaving Westeros. It hurt him to know how close he was to have never known she was alive and about Serena's existence. 

"Who will say the Great Black Company was hers," Ser Davos spoke again.

That awoke Jon's curiosity.

Each time the men of the free folk returned from White Harbor, they would always bring with him stories of the great fleet of Essos that kicked Westeros out of the board. They were faster and more organized. And powerful, of course.

"Speak to me about them," Jon asked him, "I heard some rumors. Bad things, mostly."

"Well, bad for the injured parties," he replied, chuckling, "I heard about it so many times that it seems incredibly she was behind it all this time. It's a joint-stock company, my guess is that she started it and then she met powerful allies in the way."

"It's not the first time she outdoes our expectations."

"Clearly not."

* * *

In days before the return of Ser Davos, an envoy of Unsullied went to the streets of King's Landing to fetch their Master of Coin. They found him in a brothel. 

"You can stay here or whatever place you like. Your services are no longer required," Torgo Nudho informed him while the other soldiers threw his things at his feet.

"Why did you let him be Master of Coin?" she asked Bran, then.

"I let you kill Tyrion," he argued in his monotone tone. They left the conversation there.

The day Ser Davos returned, they have the meeting. She felt a little bit wary to see him again after so many years and the circumstances of their last encounter. 

However, when they saw each other again he examined her carefully and smiled embracing her with his arms.

"I must admit that I am happy to see you," he said and it was the only thing they could speak before sealing the matter forever. Sometimes the past had to be left behind, definitely.

The small council, as its name indicated, was in its smallest composition. Their Master of Laws had died shortly before her arrival and now they had lost the Master of Coin. The position of Master of Whispers was vacant since the year of Bran's coronation, and Daenerys though they'll need one.

But what they needed most was a Master of Coin.

Daenerys announced that Great Black would provide the necessary ships to expedite the shipment of food to the North, to the West and to supply the necessary boats to Yara Greyjoy's fleet to stop looting the lands of the North. She calculated that it would be enough to appease the waters between Lady Yara and Lady Sansa, although Dany had a clear preference for the Ironborn.

She was not surprised that the Lords did not want to collaborate with the Crown by sending their men to mitigate the looting of bandits on the main roads. Sending the Unsullied was out of her options. In this dilemma she found herself evaluating where to act first: whether for the nobles or for the peasants.

Once she would have obviously answered for the peasants, but in Westeros, she had to be careful. Many of those peasants were conditioned to some Lord's whim, one could even say that they were helpful to them. She was and will remain being the Mad Queen. Her help was necessary and they would eat from her hand but they could still bite her as soon as she neglected a little.

"Can I suggest something?" Ser Brienne of Tarth decided to make herself heard after spending the entire meeting looking at her with a leery face.

"Of course, Ser Brienne."

"Gather the nobles, small houses included. We must show that the Crown considers them important. Many of these Lords and Ladies have lost faith in our diligence, and rightly so. They seek to protect themselves because we fail to give them that security."

They were wise words and her idea converged with a thought circling her mind.

"What do Lords love most besides their lands and fortresses?" Daenerys asked to test if she was so smart.

Brienne thought about it a moment before answering with certainty,

  
"Feasts."

* * *

That first week was strenuous and she had barely spared time to be with Serena. It was not the first occasion in which she had so much work that she neglected her daughter. Daenerys felt awful and was filled with the irrational fear Jon will use her absence to take away her affection.

She knew he was going to see her training, daily. Serena told her that he offered to instruct her to use a sword but Daenerys was not comfortable with the idea of him holding such a weapon so close to her daughter. Torgo Nudho totally disapproved the idea and offered to be the one to teach her.

"I love you, Torgo. But that's not your asset," Serena scoffed, and Torgo held up a hand and gently tapped her neck. "I need a Westerosi knight. They say he is the best swordsman in Westeros. I saw him training with his nephew, and he is very good. I can learn through him."

"But he is not a knight," Daenerys insisted.

"Then ask Ser Brienne," she begged but Dany assumed that, because of the distrust that the woman possessed against her, she wouldn't think better of her daughter.

They didn't discuss the subject anymore but Dany knew Serena would insist until she had her damn instructor. Maybe Jon was the right choice, then she thought when finding herself without really good options. She had to learn to separate the Jon who killed her of his own accord, to the Jon who murdered her little girl without knowing that she existed. She didn't have to convey those feelings in Serena.

The most exhausting day was the day they bid farewell to the members of the Great Council. Serena, Jon and herself again pretended in front of them for several hours until their feet hurt from being standing so long. There were no more thrones to sit on and the King didn't need one.

"muña, skorkydoso olvie jēda gaomi bisa?" asked Serena in Valyrian, growing weary. "pōnta mirre ȳdragon nūmāzma keskydoso!"

Dany was used to it but Jon and Serena seemed really disturbed to have to spend this amount of time just converging, cementing alliances and contacts with these people for the sake of mutual understanding.

Jon seemed funny watching her reaction even though she knew he didn't understand a word in Valyrian.

Before she could answer him, Princess Arianne came down with all her elegance and that distracted everyone present. Her talk was not like the others, it was more incisive and he noticed how, through some flirting, she enjoyed making Jon nervous.

  
The Martells hate you, Daenerys wanted to tell him but she let the moment not affect her in any way other than Jon's obviousness and innocence.

She moved to dismiss the last guest that was Willas. Dany enjoyed chatting with him, and of all the members of the Council after Yara Greyjoy and the affable Gendry Baratheon, Willas was the other only people who seemed not to hold a grudge against her. Or at least it didn't make it obvious.

"Would you spare a last minute, my Lady?" Arianne surprised her when it seemed that the day was over.

"Of course, your grace," Dany agreed, although she believed rash that she waited for all the other members to leave to approach a second time. The worst thing Daenerys could do in times of dissent and intrigue was to put the needs of one of the members above others.

"You and your husband have a tumultuous history, I daresay. However, I see you and both look great together. Ice and fire, that's how they've been dubbing you at the wedding."

Dany had no idea of that, and the invasion of her intimacy seemed increasingly absurd.

"It's the ice and fire pact fulfilled twice. Once in him and once in your daughter, right?"

Daenerys had to take time to remember that pact of the Dance times.

"I don't understand your point, your grace."

"It seems to me that this pact is already fulfilled, the story is more than finished. The Targaryen and the Starks. Why insist on the same union? There are six other kingdoms that should take into account when it comes to alliances that possibly rule the Seven Kingdoms. "

At that point, Daenerys felt really disoriented.

"Could you be clear, Princess?"

"Your daughter's hand. You have promised her with Lady Sansa Stark's son."

If it hadn't been for how serious it was, Daenerys would have guffed.

"My daughter is not promised to anyone."

Arianne's face paled.

"Where did you get that idea, if you let me know your grace?"

* * *

"You summoned me?" 

It was obvious she did, Jon chided himself, but he didn't know how else begin a conversation after standing there in her office a long moment, observing her doing whatever she does now as Hand, the Unsullied guards watching him with hostility. 

"Of course I did," Dany agreed, before casting aside her doing to staring up at him, "There's something you mulled over to tell me?"

Jon startled and provided no answer. The empty affability with which they treated each other vanished.

"I don't know you," Dany stated, "For me, you are a complete stranger. So entailing you to trust me would be the greatest folly of my part," She stood and their eyes were at the same height, "All I can do is to entreating you to make me aware of any sort of matter that concerns Serena." 

He could merely guess what she was talking about. Her scathing tone suggested it has to do with the only subject that could prompt such a reaction. 

"You are speaking about Sansa's proposition," his hand slacken by his sides, "I already told her it was nonsensical."

"Yet you did not inform me," Dany kept on with her indictment, "And your goodbrother went around spreading false rumors our children are set to marry in the future." 

"It was a conversation. I never..." he hesitated, pondering her words, "It's not my place to decide something like that." Jon stepped forward as the Unsullied stirred, nettled by her assumption he would overstep that way, "And you do know me. You know I'm not that kind of person."

"Did you also believe it was just a conversation when you did tell her the truth about your parents?" Dany derided his rebuttal, "No, I don't know you, Jon. But I do know Sansa, better than you ever will. It's not a marriage what she sets sights on, it's chaos." She circled her desk, standing near him without fearing him now her Unsullied were there, he observed. Her face transmuted with an expression that Jon remembered very well from one of their last conversations in Dragonstone. He could not deny that Dany discerned Sansa's intentions well. "Twelve years and she still holds rivalry against me."

Jon sighed with growing despair. 

"I am here so you can hold me accountable for her deeds?"

"No," she snapped, "You are here because you will choose. I know perfectly what your feelings for our shared blood are. And I know how deep is your love for House Stark," she begrudged him with her words, "Serena shares both bloods and I never denied her from that truth. Consider that when I ask you the next question, would you choose Serena over Sansa and her children?" a tense silence followed her statement, he was about to reply when she continued, "Give me an answer now, and bear in mind you can't recant of your response."

Jon sucked in a sharp breath and both stared at the other with challenge. 

"I choose Serena," he declared, standing straight, at any moment dubious. "Always."

She was waiting for another response, he knew when he saw outrage sparkling in her eyes. 

"I do not believe you."

This time was Jon who chuckled incredulously. 

"Then why do you ask me?" he shouted, "I know I hurt you. I know I hurt you both. That I don't deserve stand in the same ground than you, but I'll spend the rest of my life trying to redeem that," he was full of contempt, "What about you? Do you have at least a sting of remorse? Do you ever think back in all the children, like Serena, that died that day? Blood that stains your hands!" 

"Do you think I am here because I wanted some form of...redemption? That I came back to restore the name of the Targaryens? I am here because of your brother's mouth that couldn't keep shut up. I am here because the people you saved from my wrath, destroyed Westeros with their intrigues and enmity and because they were sending assassins to end us," she spat, "I am here putting my face and working to save this shit hole, once again, from people like your sister that does not care who hurts in her way to obtain what she hanker after," she put off her mask for a moment and Jon saw her hurt. "Because, let's be honest, Jon, Sansa didn't care for you welfare when she spread the truth. Sure she alleges she was protecting you, right? By exposing you to my rage. But Sansa is an intelligent woman, she knew Cersei would never surrender as she knew I was unable to hurt you," the mask was on again, "Sometimes I wonder if she knew you were capable."

And there was again, the pain he knew so well. It was the first time she let him see it, apart from the fear.

"Innocent people shouldn't pay the consequences of our quarrels," Jon concluded not wanting to face her derision any longer, "Tell me how I prove myself worthy of your trust and I shall oblige."

Her soft chuckling sent chills trough his spine. 

"There it is the only Jon Snow I know. Fettered to his duty."

* * *

Jon remembered climbing these stairs watching Daenerys land with Drogon minutes before she gave that terrifying speech in front of her soldiers. Outside King's Landing, there was not much difference, soldiers from the North and the Vale were also celebrating the fall of Cersei and House Lannister. No one but Tyrion, Ser Davos and a small escort of northerners seemed to see the massacre in between. Sometimes he still had nightmares with those memories.

When he looked at Daenerys, he now did not recognize the young and sacrificed queen he fell in love with, nor the dragon queen he killed to protect the Realm. Daenerys Hand of the King, his wife, mother of his daughter and owner of a company, was the result of never having known her well from the beginning. Everything about her was unknown and at the same time, better than he could have expected considering the circumstances surrounding them.

He looked at Sansa adjusting Edd's hair while her maids finished loading their luggage in the carriage that would transport them to the port. Harry was running around with Lya in his arms. Jon knew his sister and his nephews but the intimacy of their family, the Starks of Winterfell, was still unknown to him, as the person of Daenerys.

Then he realized how dispossessed of any identity he felt. There was only one certainty in his mind, and that was Serena. He would never forgive himself at least trying to build with her what he always wanted for himself: a family. He loved his nephews and they were innocent in that game of thrones between Daenerys and Sansa that dated from before their existence. But Daenerys was right about something, on this occasion and on the previous one, it was Sansa who put the innocence of others in the middle. Edd and Lya's wellbeing couldn't depend on him if Serena was on the other side, he hated herself for thinking like that but it was what he felt. He could not attribute the work of protecting them that belonged to Sansa.

"Uncle Jon!" Lya shouted, letting go of Harry's grip and jumping towards him. What he was about to do did not prevent him from squeezing the little girl hard, as he had always done since she was a little baby and Sansa allowed him to choose her name. "I'm going to miss you Uncle Jon, when you come back to Winterfell bring Serena with you, I promise I will show you all my toys and Princess Snow!"

Princess Snow was the pony that Harry gave her on her last nameday. He doesn't even remember that Sansa had been so spoiled by Lord Stark.

Jon closed his eyes tightly. Would Serena ever want to accompany him to the North?

He went down to Lya without a word. Sansa noticed his strange change of mood.

"The south always puts that expression on your face, right?"

No, Sansa. This expression has your name, he would have answered if the children and her Lord husband were not present.

"I come to inform you that by order of the Hand of the King with his respective consent, the Crown will take Eddard as his ward," he spoke the words clearly and briefly.

Sansa snorted.

"The Hand of the King? You mean Daenerys," she seemed not to accept the reality of the facts, "I do not consent. He is my son, the heir of Winterfell and next to me is where he belongs."

Harry stepped forward to stand beside her. He was taller than bravery, or so they said.

In the middle, the children watched confused, He saved the pain of seeing Edd's eyes.

"I asked you to think about their wellbeing before acting motivated by your impulses. Princess Arianne questioned Daenerys for a decision she didn't even make."

"And that's why she will take my son with the consent of my brothers?"

I'm not your brother, he thought fleetingly. And Bran is Bran, no more. That is why she assumed the role of the last Stark.

"We must rely on Bran's judgment..." he tried to reason but Sansa was already too far altered. 

"I don't trust her!" She walked until she was in front of him, pushing Lya towards her father and speaking in a low tone so that only he would listen, "Jon, how many children did that woman slaughter? And you want me to allow mine, my only son, with her?"

Jon swallowed, feeling invaded.

"I give you my word that I will take care of him with my life."

Sansa shook her head.

"This is an insult to the North," Harry stepped forward, "If our vassals find out, they will raise their banners on behalf of House Stark and Westeros will bleed again. Think well about what you are saying, Jon. You are a good, honorable man. Don't allow your aunt to spread her madness on you."

Jon exhaled sharply as his hands turned fists at his side. He always had the trait to know how to contain himself before provocations.

"Have you ever been at war with a dragon, Harry? I don't remember seeing you in the battle of King's Landing when Drogon ended the Greyjoy fleet, the scorpions and the Golden Company in less than twenty minutes. I assured you that the Northmen and the soldiers of the Vale will keep that in mind when the call to raise their banners arrives."

Harry swallowed hard.

"Uncle Jon, I don't want to stay," Edd advanced and spoke in a flat voice. It broke his heart.

"The experience will help you better understand the South by the time you become Lord of Winterfell. Your grandfather, for whom you bear your name, also took a ward who grew up with us and whom we love as our brother, Theon."

"Theon was a hostage of our father," Sansa snapped angrily, her voice broken and her eyes red. The soldiers of the North prepared for any action they had to take. Jon waited for the Unsullied to back him because he didn't bring any weapon. "At least have the decency to tell us that's what your wife is doing, taking my son as her hostage."

Edd and Lya looked at him with wide eyes and open mouths.

"This would not have happened had you keep yourself at bay. She has all the reasons and the power to do much more, but she came here in good faith to provide her aid, again, because our daughter lives in danger of being killed by the same she will help. All you had to do was cooperate and you chose to spread a false rumor to hinder her work and spark intrigues. Not to mention that you dared to use our daughter's name for that. How can I protect your children if you are not the one in the front line to do it?"

Something like understanding appeared on Harry's face. Jon didn't know how much he participated in his wife's plotting.

"The North does not want to lose its advantage over the other kingdoms, you told me. What better advantage than Winterfell's heir growing up in Red Keep?"

"The men of our family don't do well in the South," Sansa argued one last plea. "I promise to subjugate myself to the will of your wife, but don't take a mother away from her son. That's exactly the Lannister's way."

"Deceit and betrayal. That was also the Lannister's way."

* * *

The departure of the members of the Great Council had mitigated Serena's unease and Daenerys rejoiced to have her smiling and eager as she always was. She had resumed her lessons, which had her a little frustrated because the dispossession of more time in her training with the Unsullied, but a severe look from Daenerys was enough for her to understand how necessary they were. Daenerys herself never had the opportunity of formal education, so it was imperative that Serena understood how lucky she was in that regard.

That thought reminded Daenerys about the reform she planned to implement on the education of the children of King's Landing. In the Small Council, only Ser Davos did not question her intentions. Ser Brienne saw her with skepticism and the Archmaestre alleged injury. Only when Dany suggested that it would be a way to educate the children in the faith of the Seven and keep the foreign faith away, the old man agreed to mediate with his Citadel peers. It was the same tactic she had used in Meereen to educate former slaves with the help of the servants of the red god.

"Muña," Serena called to tell her to catch one of the pieces of the honeyed chicken they were eating. Dany opened her mouth and shook her head in time to catch the pitch. Serena smiled at her and then cut another piece to throw her up and catch her herself. Those were not lady's manner, she knew, but she liked to boast of her good aim as a concept.

Blue Weaver went out to the balcony to report that they had a visitor: Jon.

Daenerys and Serena looked at each other curiously.

"Let him pass," Dany agreed, instinctively approaching her daughter in search of her contact. No matter how protected they were, she always had that slight suspicion that his approach was pernicious.

"What will he want?" Serena questioned with a weighted arched eyebrow.

Dany supposed he was coming to persuade her decision. Surely, Sansa claimed that her son would be in great danger near her and he, aware of the threat she was, succumbed to her sister's mislead. Always innocent and disoriented.

He walked until he was in front of them, smiling at Serena with more confidence and crossing his hands behind him as if he were one of her soldiers giving her the reports of the day and not her husband, father of her daughter. Dany realized that it was the first time she paid attention to that detail. She still didn't think of him that way.

"I didn't want to interrupt you but I reckon neccessary to inform you that Lord Eddard Stark was transferred to his chambers and Lady Sansa and her family have left for Winterfell."

There was silence from mother and daughter before he continued.

"I fear that his reaction was that of any child of that age who receives such news. He has never been so far from home," he swallowed nervously looking up at the sky behind them, "If I may, I would like to accompany him while he adapts. We are both from the North in an environment that is strange for us."

Daenerys was stunned and looked for an indicated answer in her mind. That gave Serena a chance to snap.

"Why do you stay if you don't like to be here? You can leave."

A shadow of pain crossed Jon's face.

"I don't want to leave. I simply say that it is not easy to uproot oneself from what is known to one. More so, if one is a child."

Serena denied, moving her head from side to side.

"It hasn't cost me that much and I'm just a little older than him. I've spent more time traveling in boats than walking on the mainland."

Jon fell silent and looked at her wistfully. It was not the first time he had given her that look, a yearning to understand what she is saying and feeling.

"Not everyone has that lifestyle, my love," Daenerys hastened to cut Serena's tirade. She wasn't rude, Jon would understand shortly when he knew her better. She had never known a highborn child as Eddard, who spent his entire life in the security and stability of a home. "I'm glad you kept your word and intercede in this matter with your sister. But I'm curious to know if Lady Sansa protested or was collaborative. I beseech you to be honest."

Both women looked at Jon expectantly as he sighed and confessed,

"You know her temper better than me, you said."

It was an evasion but Dany held its meaning. A part of her gloated in the bliss of causing grief in the spirit of Sansa Stark. She wouldn't touch a single hair of his son but Sansa was not able to conceive Daenerys so benevolent. Her greatest weakness was once her brother, but with Jon having massacred her affection for him, for Sansa, Daenerys was an enigma.

"Good," Dany replied, returning to reflect on Jon's attitude.

Maybe it was the years that had passed and the fact that she didn't know him that well, but he had managed to refute her presumptions twice. I should start raising the bar, she told herself, but then remembered why she was doing it: Serena. "I give you my word that your nephew will be safe while in my care. I have done many bad things but I have never broken a promise."

Jon nodded with understanding.

Serena approached her ear and whispered, "Why does that child have to stay?"

Daenerys responded in the same way, "His mother made me angry." She decided not to tell her what Sansa had tried. There would be time to discuss these matters with her.

Both giggled. Their complicity provoked a contemplative grimace in Jon. Longing, envy or esteem, Dany didn't know.

Even so, with the memory of his weakness and the many opportunities she offered him and he refused, Dany yielded to the impulse of her mind.

  
"Take a seat and sup with us."

  
It was like a deafening scream that left him paralyzed in his place. After a few seconds, it also caused her discomfort so she gestured to the opposite end of the table to sit down.

"Of course," he said enthusiastically.

Serena looked between them apprehensively.

Her daughter deserves more than a man forced to retract his choice, Daenerys thought, while asking Vizi to serve another plate for him. But if she had to be reasonable, and she prayed any god she was being, Jon didn't have the whole truth in his hands when he did what he did. Yes, he rejected her and the Targaryen blood, but not his daughter. There was no doubt, although, that if the day came when he made Serena feel only a little of what she had felt by his side, she would send him so far that the Wall would be closer to Serena than him.

For now, she continued swallowing the honeyed chicken and the salad of sweetgrass, allowing father and daughter to talk about whatever they wanted to talk about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With this chapter, I hope to have clarified why Serena being queen is a whole matter in this story. She is bonded to Drogon, and with this power, she could eventually reclaim the Seven Kingdoms and is this what motivates Dany and Bran to keep an eye on her eventual fate and not let things adrift at destiny's mercy. 
> 
> Edd and Serena are not meant to be a couple. They will grow together as cousins. The main idea of this story is Jonery, Serena growing up with an assembled family, and some political conflicts in between.


	12. Hankering and Mettle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dany's inner struggles while deciding the course of her life and Westeros meets with Jon's conflict to bond with his daughter in the midst of the apparition of someone who threatens his second opportunity in life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> believe me, I did not have the intention to make this chapter THIS long, I actually removed some scenes to make it shorter.

**XII.**

**Hankering and Mettle.**

Dany dove into the tub of boiled water and stayed there for a few seconds with her eyes open facing the ceiling with its delicate wavy and sharp details. This chamber was one of the few that came out unabated of her anger. Tyrion was shrewd when he made arrangements to place her where she would not have a constant reminder of her misdeeds, although such an intention was inane to earn her compromise, later, just as disdain was for her memory.

She emerged from it with an open mouth desperate for fresh air, her body exalted with the burden of the grief of her soul. 

She lay on the edge, lugging her knees against her bare chest to hid her cheerless face in the shelter of herself.

From time to time, intrusive thoughts would return to vex her spirit as she deserved. Those were all the souls that have crowded in her so as not to be forgotten, and to punish her.

At the time of her death, she barely felt alive, rather she was soulless like the wights of the army of the dead, subdued by a vacuous desire to slay whatever in front of them.

A monster. A vile creature.

Maybe she always was, doomed and thwarted from the start. In her mother's womb, freeing herself from the grip of death. A girl trotting behind her brother to have another day of life.

Pain.

Cold.

Fear.

That's why she didn't like the cold, it reminded her of endless nights lying on cobblestones that hurt the skin of her hands, always so crisp and wet.

They were all right, she told herself once more, like every day since she woke up resurrected on a cold, stoned surface in the Temple of Volantis. My death was a blessing to this world. My life a torment for everyone, even for myself. Robert and his assassins, Varys and his deadly envoys, Sansa and Tyrion. 

Jon. The winner. The one who did what they could not.

Daenerys was rejected and spurned from her first breath until her last one.

Until Serena came to her life and changed everything, gaving her a reason to live. It was only for her that Daenerys couldn't afford regret her past. It should be easy curse the moment she met Jon but, without him, she wouldn't have Serena. Without Serena, her life wouldn't have sense. 

Dany stepped out of the tub, wrapping herself in a cotton robe to dry up and rub scented ointments all over her body. It was a time to distend the hustle and bustle of the day but it was also an encounter with loneliness and memories, especially when she covered her left breast and kneaded the blemish under it. Perhaps if she were more graceful in that section of her body, she could hide its appearance but she wasn't so the mark of his knife was hard to ignore.

That scar talks about who I am and who I was, she thinks. A minimal punishment to all her sins, but over time it seemed to get heavier and painful to bear.

She remembered her slip with Daario, months after Serena's birth. She didn't even feel attracted to him, but she desperately needed to return to that time where she would share her bed with a man for whom she felt nothing, to satisfy mere carnal needs.

She needed control.

Daario's horror and disgust at seeing the scar seal the rest of her subsequent search for intimacy. That experience served Daenerys to realize that she was scarred and that could not be overlooked. It was a blunt statement too, which explained itself. No person has that mark on the heart and is alive. Only two people.

It had been years since she felt the desire of a man's touch. Never enough make her lost her mettle again.

* * *

Jon, Edd, and Serena went to the docks to received Ghost and Jon's friend, Tormund Giantsbane, who has never stepped on King's Landing before. Muña told her about him when she explained who the free folk were. She didn't expect anything extraordinary but still felt curious about them, as she feels with any new person. For example, her cousin, who was still in his self imposed ice treatment and not speaking a single word to her or to Jon. She could see in his face how angered he was and Serena urged to tell Muña to return him with his evil mother. 

Unsullied escorts were still around her. 

A boat, not so large as the ones of the Great Black, was moored at one private dock. When Jon turned around beaming at her Serena looked away, gulping. He was always throwing those expressions at her and making her terribly nervous. She just wanted to see the direwolf.

They stopped there, waiting at one side while Jon climbed to the deck. Only the squawks of seagulls filling the awkward silence. 

A loud sound was heard then, like someone being knocked down to the floor of the boat. Brown Fox instructed both children to stand behind him. Then, from one of the railings, reddish hair and two eyes peeked out and looked down menacingly.

"It's her?" the man, who she assumed it was Tormund, asked. "Oh, I see. Yes, yes. The sad eyes of a crow."

Then some hurried steps were heard, like dog's paws trotting on the wooden floor. From the ramp that Jon had climbed aboard, lowered a large wad of white hair and eyes so red that it scared her first. A direwolf. Ghost.

Behind him, Jon and his friend the wildling, who was much taller and bigger than she had imagined, came down behind the wolf with content expressions.

"Serena, he is Tormund. Tormund, she is Serena," he approached the direwolf who had his muzzle open and his tongue out as a clear gesture of complaint about the change of environment from the North to the South. "And this one here is Ghost."

It was Edd who approached first to jump on Tormund's arm and let himself rise in the air as if it were less than a feather and then pet the wolf as if it were a mere puppy. Meanwhile, Serena kept seeing him in the eyes, hypnotized, she didn't know if she was expecting something or what.

"Come on, boy, come closer," Jon urges his wolf, stroking him behind his only ear. "Don't be afraid, Serena."

"I'm not afraid," she hurried to rebuke, placing a hand on Brown Fox's arm to assure him that she would be fine.

She took a few steps, still uncertain and cautious of the animal's reaction. She remembered how many times she did the same when Drogon landed stunned on the outskirts of any one of free cities where they would stay. 

When she was halfway, the wolf also advanced towards her, prudent and moderate he was. As soon as Serena was only a few steps away, she realized that he reached her face level. It was immense. Bigger than a common wolf, she supposed.

She lifted a hand and drew it near his open muzzle, which the wolf responded with sniffing and then licking her while wagging his tail enthusiastically. 

Ghost took her giggles as a signal to stride forward to kiss her all over her face, throwing her backward and forcing her to land on her bum while burying her hands on his thickened mane.

* * *

The next month until Serena's nameday passed like lightning streaking through the stormy sky. His light in a darkness from which Jon had not come off since his life was cut short by the truth of his origin. And the decision that cost him the rest of his life, but that for some reason, returned to him in the form of a unique opportunity.

Ghost has never been so far from the North, just like him. The first time Dany saw him in the halls of Red Keep, she looked skeptical and asked how long they think the direwolf would withstand the climate of the South.

"He's going to adapt," Jon replied, observing by her expression, that Serena had the same concern.

Dany didn't believe him, shook her head disapprovingly and passed by them to greet a too excited Tormund who chanted "Dragon Queen!" and lifted her up, stirring the patience of her guards.

It was one of the few times Jon saw her smiling broadly. They did not share supper again, though she did allow Serena to come over several times. His daughter and his nephew gradually stopped treating each other like two strangers and began to talk about the only thing they had in common besides their blood: their taste for fighting.

Jon supposed that was because none of them had been in a real war, and if the gods were good, they never would be.

"Muña says it's because she was in three wars when I was still in her womb," Serena once commented, leaving both Edd, him and Bran, who was present but distant, with stunned faces.

Jon made the count in his mind. Dany was already with child during the war with the dead, when she attacked King's Landing and when he ended her life with a knife in her heart.

Serena mentioned three wars, and his confusion was noticed by Bran who, without remedy in permits, clarified,

"Meereen. Daenerys returned to Meereen to help the Second Sons and the Unsullied to cease the uprisings of the slavers."

That was too long, Jon lamented. Too much time with my baby in her womb while still at war.

"You knew that?" he questioned Bran with tenuous discomfort in his voice. Such news would have crossed the Narrow Sea and arrived them, sooner or later.

"We knew that Bay of Dragons was still in the hands of her soldiers, who were fighting on her behalf. We never knew they were fighting with her at the command."

It was Edd who made an important remark.

"Well, if Black Dread had burned a whole city again, everyone would've known!"

"Drogon didn't burn Meereen!" Serena fiercely snapped at him, "We defended it," and Jon felt disquieted she included herself in it, " We defended the city with our soldiers until the slavers stopped harassing the freedmen and Daario trained them to learn to defend their freedom."

Daario, Jon remembered. Dany's lover. Well, Dany's former lover.

"Daario Naharis," Jon recalled aloud, "The Commander of the Second Sons?"

Dany always talked about him with apathy, a man who meant little emotionally but to whom, for some reason, she entrusted with the care of her greatest victory: the liberation of Slaver's Bay.

A bitterness forced him to set aside his plate of food. You put your loyalties in the wrong places, Dany, he thought.

"He commands all the forces of Bay of Dragons now and every so often we visit him so he doesn't forget that Muña always has an eye on him," Serena confessed, indifferent to Jon's discomfort at that moment. "After all, sellsword has no honor to respond to," she added, sagely. 

And perhaps that's why he was loyal to Dany when he couldn't, Jon began to think. 

* * *

When she turned eight, they flew on Drogon for the first time. When she turned nine, Muña allowed her to go hunting with Torgo Nudho and the Dothraki in the forest of Qohor. When she turned ten, she began to allow her to handle small sums of money on her own. At ten and one, she agreed to let her walk occasionally on her own without having a constant escort.

On the day of her twelfth nameday, Serena was clear that the only thing she has in mind is also the only thing that Muña is not going to grant her easily. 

Luckily, both had something to permute that day.

In the morning, her mother entered her chamber singing a ballad in Valyrian that, according to her, helped her wake up when she was a baby with deep sleep. She slipped between the sheets and kissed Serena all over her face while they laughed.

After cuddles and laughter, they break fast together on Red Keep's balcony when she throws an announcement at her,

"We will have a feast."

"A feast?"

"It's just a formal event for the members of the court to have something to talk about."

"I don't like the members of the court."

Muña sighed. 

"You like to be treated like an adult and one day you want to be queen. You have to start by accepting that this will be your life from now on."

Serena understood but still was found the idea itself disagreeable. 

"I want Jon Snow to teach me how to use a sword," she snapped without warning.

Her mother scowled with confusion. 

"I don't trust him," her mother stated straightforwardly with a wary face.

"Me neither," she admitted, "Not like a daughter should trust her father. But I think he's good. I don't think he will hurt me. He has nothing to gain by doing it."

Muña squinted at her.

"Are you...conditioning me? Your presence at the feast in exchange for letting Jon teach you to use a sword?"

"Deciprocity," Serena told her with a witty smile. 

" _Reciprocity_ ," Muña corrected her with an arched-eyebrow look, "smart girl, what am I going to do with you?"

* * *

Dany stood at the main courtyard of Red Keep as ceremonial as she has learned to perform in the last two and a half months she has been in Westeros. It was all she ever wanted once, and now it was just another burden she would carry with her until the end of her days.

The golden doors of the great walls opened when a retinue made its way to the courtyard where the small council and she awaited the arrival of some members of Black Company, and, if everything went well, their future Master of the Coin.

She hated using Serena as an excuse to gather the lords of the large and small houses of the Crowlands in an attempt to file rough edges between the Crown and its subjects. It would not be the first of many of these events that she would have to arrange, as Ser Brienne said. And as long as the money came out of her own wallet, no one could criticize her for excessiveness.

Not all directors were present, of course. Most of them were in distant points of the Known World, minding their own business to waste time in a charity cause like Westeros was at this moment. They got out of their carriages and horses contemplating Red Keep, with eyes that have seen the painful situation of the city outside the walls and wondering what the hells they were doing there.

Daenerys asked herself the same question, frequently.

To ensure that Serena does not end up riding Drogon blazing an entire city, she thought, and it devasted her. She was the only one who could protect her daughter from all that damage. Even if they reached that point, Daenerys was only one who would be loyal to her until her last breath. No one else. 

She was filled with flattery. True or false, she thanked to have familiar faces by her side. She presented them with the members of the small council, carefully following the protocol while looking for the person whose assistance was the most important.

Then a lone rider broke into the yard, alerting the guards who were already closing the doors. Always close to her, Grey Worm also moved, but Daenerys recognized the figure almost instantly and asked her friend to calm down.

She advanced to the man dressed simply, with a scarf that covered most of his face except for his narrowing eyes, dazzled by sunlight. He wore his hair longer, therefore gathered in a bun in the back of his head.

"You always had something with the triumphal procession," she commented as he got off the horse. He still looked too tall, she thought.

"Is there another way to get Daenerys Targaryen's attention?"

His accent was a memory of how uprooted she felt in King's Landing, pretending to be a Westerosi.

"Ben," she extends a hand to greet him, which he took to his lips and kiss, causing Daenerys to roll her eyes.

* * *

Jon never had many possessions in his life. When he was a bastard, that kind of hankering was forbidden. The first thing he could call his was Ghost, and it's not that the direwolf really belonged to him. So the only thing that he called his own, and would one day be his only inheritance for Serena if she allowed it, was Longclaw. But there was still time for that day to come, he supposed. Therefore, he had to think well in a suitable gift for the first nameday that he would spend by her side, without resorting to something impersonal.

In the small chest where he stored his things, he came upon his mother's brooch, that Sansa had found among her family's scattered things in a warehouse some time ago, and extended to him. A rose-shaped pin, which could be any ordinary rose or it could be a winter rose, Lyanna's favorite flower. He didn't know what kind of flowers Serena liked, or if she even liked them at all, but he decided he didn't lose anything by gifting her an object that reminded him of Lyanna, a grandmother and a mother they both will never know. 

On the way to Great Hall, he stumbled upon a man who seemed lost. He carried books under his arm and looked everywhere nervously. He was older, maybe a few years younger than Davos. His attire was elegant, colorful and striking.

"Can I help you?" Jon asked, not wanting to be a lout and pass him by.

The man jolted surprised but then he laughed to himself at his overreaction.

"I must meet with the Hand of the King. I was told that her office is in a tower, but it is not in any of the towers I have visited. And well, there are many, my Lord!"

Jon frowned. He didn't think Dany had planned an audience on Serena's nameday. As the man seemed honest and convinced that she invited him, Jon decided to accompany him to the Great Hall where, surely, Daenerys was already waiting.

He didn't expect to see so many people, though he also didn't know how many members there were in King's Landing Court. He knew that none of them were really there for Serena but for the occasion to celebrate and meet the newly arrived party of Essos that Serena talked about a few days ago during her sword lessons. Necessary paraphernalia, he thought. 

Some people turned to look at him, Jon did not want to imagine what things were going through their minds, but some familiar faces of the wedding were kind enough to greet him to which he replied with a simple nodding. 

"What a celebration, my Lord," the man next to him commented, "Excuse me, haven't I asked your name yet?"

"Jon," he replied immediately, realizing he hadn't asked his either.

"Just Jon, my Lord?" he settled the books under his arm, "oh," then he paled, "Are you Lord Targaryen?"

Jon felt awkward when he reminded him that he was now going by that name. Jon Targaryen. Not Snow. Not Stark.

"You are Lady Daenerys' husband, right?"

Suddenly, he no longer felt so uncomfortable.

"I am, my Lord..." he narrowed his eyes trying to remember his name, only to realize that again, he hadn't asked.

"Lord Gadriel Stallworth, my Lord," he replied, extending his hand for Jon to take in a formal greeting. "I requested an audience with your wife when I learned that the position of Master of the Coin had become vacant."

Jon had no idea what matters Dany was currently dealing with, but he nodded and listened to the man's explanations.

"I'm afraid I've been inconvenient, however. Is the castle feasting?"

"It's a celebration for our daughter's nameday."

The man's face turned crimson so strong that Jon himself looked the other way uncomfortable. For some reason, he remembered him to Sam.

"Oh, my Lord. I'm so sorry. I'll be back another day when it's more adequate if you are kind enough to inform your Lady wife."

"Jon," Daenerys's blunt voice interrupted the exchange. 

Daenerys appeared next to several people by her side making Grey Worm's presence not necessary. They all seemed to be Essosi, who looked at Jon through and through with interesting faces.

  
The blue dress she wore was a contrast to the rest of the baggy and faded gowns worn by other ladies. 

"Lord Stallworth," Jon entwined his hands on his back and stepped aside so Daenerys was in front of both of them, "my wife, Lady Daenerys Targaryen."

It was the first time he called her that, out loud. Daenerys watched him indifferently before speaking to her attendees something in a language unknown to him and standing closer to Lord Stallworth to greeting him with her best ceremonial smile.

He moved to keep searching for Serena.

* * *

Serena looked reluctantly at the panoramic view of King's Landing while the Unsullied made sure that no one would interrupt her private moment on the balcony. She looked at the skirt of her dress and stretched the fabric to see how it shone by the light of the setting sun. 

Next to her, Ghost stretched. Even if he was lying down, he reached her hip perfectly and she could stroke his head without making any effort. Since his arrival at King's Landing, he only walked away from her when he was hungry and turned to Jon for food.  
  


Behind her she heard movement and assumed that it would be her mother coming to hurry her. She sighed and turned around only to meet Jon, arguing with Brown Fox.  
  


"Brown Fox," Serena caught his attention. That day she didn't feel like arguing with anyone. "Let him come," she demanded in a tone similar to what Muña used when she commanded.  
  


Jon approached her in a suit alike to the one he used at the wedding, and the same chain of wolves carved, hanging over his chest.  
  


"You're beautiful," he told her and she blushed. She did not like flattery. However, she smiled with courtesy and threw herself on the floor to hug Ghost's fur. If Muña saw her, she would be up in arms.  
  


Jon followed her and also sat on the floor.  
  


"I didn't imagine your mother would have a party."  
  


"It's a Realm Affair," she replied soothing Ghost's fur, eliciting a groan out of him.  
  


"And what do you think?"  
  


"I don't like people telling me things about how I look, they make me feel uncomfortable," she stated, which made Jon realize his mistake.   
  


"Oh," he lamented, "You know you can say no, right? Dany wouldn't force you to anything."

Stop pretending you know her! she wanted to shout at him but it would be unfair and too disrespectful she knew. 

"If one day I become queen, this will be my life. In fact, I think it is already my life regardless of whether I am a queen or not. And maybe, I will inherit Great Black one day, which means that I will still have to deal with a lot of strangers telling me honeyed words in order to get things from me as they do with my mother," all this she said while still stroking Ghost's sturdy fur and avoiding eye contact with Jon.

It seemed curious to her that, like Drogon, they seemed so threatening to the rest of the world but so tame with her. Remembering Drogon made her miss him even more.

"Those are many plans for someone who is only ten and two," Jon jested, before changing the subject and revealing why he was there, "I wanted to give you your gift before you came down to the Hall."

"A gift?"

"Aye," Jon said while pulling out of an inner pocket, a small blue that perhaps guarded something, "my mother's name was Lyanna." He spreads it in the space on the ground between them, unfolding it little by little, "Lyanna Stark, she ..."  
  


"She was the woman for whom my uncle Rhaegar left his family," Serena finished saying for him, "I know the whole story."  
  


Jon did not speak for a few moments while she waited for him to continue doing so, indifferently stroking Ghost's fur.  
  


"Neither Dany nor I were lucky to have a mother, Serena," he spoke after a while, "I remember she had a ring from her mother, the only material memory she had left."  
  


Serena knew what ring was that. Muña had it hanging on her neck more than placed on her finger.  
  


"Perhaps it is another coincidence that a few years ago we found this one," he finishes opening the handkerchief revealing a small pin shaped like a rose; Stem, thorns, and leaves included. "It's a brooch that belonged to her. And because I have never done with it more than contemplating and thinking when it was the last time she used it, I would like you to have it and keep it."

Serena looked at the object closely. It was very beautiful and too detailed to be that small. She never used brooches but surely now she would start doing it.  
  


"Thank you," was the most immediate response that came to mind.   
  


Then Jon lifted the brooch and placed it on the side of the dress without permission and she did not oppose it because she would have to get used to it if she planned to let him teach her the postures and movements to use a sword.  
  


He looked at her chest, seeing that the brooch looked pretty good with the pinkish tone of the dress and her silver hair falling in delicate waves downwards.   
  


When she raised her eyes met Jon's who looked at her strangely. A look she had only seen in Muña.  
  


Serena backed away awkwardly.  
  


At that moment her mother went out to the balcony, accompanied by the last person she thought she would see in King's Landing.  
  


Ben.

* * *

Of course, both would be brooding away from the feast next that poor and exhausted animal, Daenerys thought while entering the balcony where Jon and Serena were chatting, sitting on the floor. By her side, Ben was carrying a gift for Serena that Daenerys deemed more appropriate to deliver in private. 

Serena shouted Ben's name and jumped away from her father and Ghost to embrace their old friend. While she did this Dany crouched to accommodate Serena's skirts and scouring the dirt and wolve's hair off the fabric.

"Dragoncub!" she heard Ben exclaimed, "Ya' still strong and furious, I see! How is life as a princess? Have they already gave ya' first royal jester? And have you looped his head off?"

He was being a clown, as always, Dany thought while standing and seeing Jon approaching with Ghost by his side, watchful. 

"I didn't! but I guessed that's why ya' here!" Serena replied imitating his accent in the common tongue. 

"Mother of R'hllor and all its crazed servants it's that a wolf?" he cursed at the sight of Ghost. "And you must be the father," he pointed at Jon and extended a hand to greet him, which Jon accepted before looking at Dany's face for an answer. 

"Ben, he is Jon, my husband, and father of Serena. The direwolf is his loyal companion, Ghost. I wouldn't do that," she explained and prevented Ben from trying to reach Ghost's muzzle. "Jon, he is Ben. He is honorable member of Great Black Company."

She never envisaged she would say any of those words someday.

"Nice to meet you, my Lord," Jon blurted out in his strong, northern accent. 

"What is that, Ben?" Serena interrupted peeking Ben's back, "Is that..." and her eyes widened, letting out a breath.

"Happy nameday, Dragoncub," he said, humbly handing over the bow Serena would add to her collection. "A friend o' mine said it belonged to a she Jhat of the Jogos Nhai."

"Where you get that, Serena?" Dany took notice of the strange object in her daughter's chest. A brooch of a rose she would have known if it was within her belongings.

"It was Jon's gift for me. It belonged to Lyanna Stark," she responded lightly before returning to inspect the weapon Ben brought for her. "Thank you, Ben. Thank you, thank you, I already adore it and the Dothraki would lose their minds knowing I carry one of this now," she started speaking harshly and mixing languages as Dany knew she did when she was experiencing too many emotions at the same time.

He gifted her Lyanna's brooch, probably the only memory of his late mother that he didn't know, something not even she has done yet with Rhaella's ring.

A turmoil of feelings flood her chest, seeing Jon's placated eyes observing Serena's reaction to the gift of Ben. She shouldn't allow herself to feel like this but she couldn't help it. She desperately wanted to tell him Serena is confused, as he once was when he learned of his true identity. His already existent love for Serena was overwhelming for her as, in that past time, Daenerys' love was too much fo him. 

Ben's gift, while beautiful and caring, was still far for mean what that brooch will for Serena someday. 

Before leaving the balcony, Dany turned and stared at Jon with sincere eyes when she said, "Thank you."

* * *

Jon felt a dunce for anticipating it and still feeling like he was being hit in the stomach, repeatedly.

He was grateful that Tormund's stories got Serena and Edd hold in thrall. Otherwise, the man, Ben, who seemed to ensnare all attention on himself would also have hers and that was worse than seeing Dany so engrossed in the conversation with him.

He knew he shouldn't care because after all, no matter how much they had sworn sacred vows, between them there was only a mutual commitment to watch over Serena's interests. Even Dany suggested that he could have lovers if he decided to return to the North, which sometimes sounded tempting, not the lovers but to return to the North, because the cold of the indifference of his supposed family was much more inhospitable than the fiercest winter.

"Our future Master of the Coin, I see," Ser Davos pointed out, skeptical, "I think jester suits him better."

He hadn't stopped entertaining the audience with his anecdotes and droll witticism. 

Jon would have laughed but his eyes were fixed on Dany's gaze, between seriousness and delight. The shape of her lips colliding with her upper teeth in a soft smile. She seemed carefree and comfortable.

"He is certainly awash with humor," Jon replied.

He turned to look at Serena's thunderous laughter when Tormund says something surely unsuitable for a highborn's feast, who was less cherished by contrast.

What would she think of her mother keeping her lover on the same roof where they live as a family? But then Jon reminded himself that they are not a true family. Rather they were as any other Westerosi noble caste; frivolity, tolerance, and feigned respect. Nothing else.

He sipped more wine from his goblet but the sweet taste did not placate his bitterness.

At a later stage of the night, after Ben had entertained the guests enough to be spent and seated in their places, the conversation took a serious tone.

"Essos is an exotic land, we all know that. Just look at the most beautiful woman in the Known World, she comes from there," he said pointing to Dany who denied with a gesture of disbelief, uncaring. "The question you have to ask yourself is how to complement each other. When a man seeks adventure, he doesn't come to Westeros. Westeros is a place," he paused, thinking of the right word, "comfortable. Sure. Well, I've heard the stories of the white walkers but, unfortunately, they are only stories now. I would have loved to have been here when that happened."

Jon frowned. No one who had seen the white walkers would say that. On the other side of the table, Dany also looked at him skeptically.

"I know a lot of people died but, every day that happens. Death is inevitable, to a greater or lesser extent for everyone," he said in a tone that left Jon uncomfortable, his gaze inevitably traveling to Dany that to his surprise, also looked at him. "Risk is our only chance, my westerosi Lords and Ladies. Take our beautiful Hand here, and I, we were hapless wanderers until we take a chance and went to dominate the Roynar and its confines, facing the Shrouded Lord himself!"

The public was left spasmodic. Jon included. Did she take Serena where they say only stone men lived?

"I am sure that the Seven Kingdoms has the potential to deploy now that they are going to join our humble fleet," he says, leading the conversation to an interesting point for everyone, "I am sure that in Those still remember the excellent donirsh wine, the wood of the North, the careful workmanship of the Stormlanders and the metal of the Westerlands Mountains, but all of those are things that Essos can get on its own, in the local market, at a cheaper price and in less time. Facing this scenario, if your grace allows me to state," he addresses Bran for the first time in all night, who just nods and listens carefully, "you must take a great risk, at least once, and throw yourselves into the water, no matter in which direction the current flows!" He raises his hands with a gesture, this time the nobles eyed at him suspiciously, "It sounds terrible, I know, but how I told ya' in a beginning, are the risks are our only chance in life."  
  


"You say it because you risked and won, my Lord," someone mentions.  
  


Ben frowns, looking over at Daenerys, "I won the moment I risked myself."

  
"If you'll excuse me, my Lords and Ladies, can I offer my perspective?" Lord Stallworth bursts in. He had been invited to stay after all.  
  


"Of course, my Lord," Daenerys concedes.  
  


"I have admired Great Black since it began as a soft rumor from the east to blow us like a great winter wind. Now, I understand its success, seeing two young and visionary people like you. But, without detracting from Lord Ben's wise guidance, I think it would be wrong to talk about risk in the case of a company and transfer that concept to our situation in Westeros."

This time Jon leans in to listen to him better.

"Sometimes success, as in your case, implies a failure for another. It is completely understandable in the context of the business and its variables. But a Westeros consists pretty much of peasants and low-born citizens, on whom depend our economy, and they never have that choice in their hands. Their lives are always at constant risk, they don't know anything better, and if we can't transform that situation they will have no qualms about throwing themselves into the water, and taking us with them."  
  


"Those are more words than my common tongue, my Lord," Ben quipped, causing people who had listened carefully to laugh and dismissing Lord Stallworth.   
  


Jon turns to see Dany, whose gaze was in conflict with what Lord Stallworth had said. He decided then, he liked Lord Stallworth. If he had some sort of influence on Dany, he would have pledged for him. 

  
"Quite an impressive man, don't you think, my Lord?"

  
Jon was startled at the sudden appearance of a woman at his side after getting distracted wandering the Great Hall with no exact direction. The effect of the wine had been to dislodge him.

  
"I suppose that being a man of the world provides you with that knowledge," he replied still a little bit soured by the impression Ben stamp on him.

She giggled.

  
"I was speaking of Lord Stallworth," she clarified. 

Then Jon paid attention. She was a young girl, maybe in the second decade of her life. He doesn't remember the last time he talked to a lady of that age, so he felt a little embarrassed.

"We met at your wedding, my lord, but I guess I can't blame a man for forgetting the face of a simple lady the day he took the most beautiful woman in the Known World as wife," she spoke again at his astonishment, "my name is Felissa Rosby."

"Excuse me, my Lady, I never had a good memory," Jon apologies sincerely, "Do you know Lord Stallworth?"  
  


He was interested in knowing more about that man. In fact, Jon realized that he wanted to know more about everything that was happening in Westeros.

  
"Of people would talk about him, in a rather jocular tone, I'm afraid," she explained, "He has come to Red Keep for years looking offering his help. The only nobleman I know who has not locked himself in his fortress to see the misfortunes happen. He may not have the answers we want to hear but after so many years maybe they are the answers we need to hear." The young Felissa turned to stand before him with a curious gaze. "You served as Lord Commander of the Night's Watch and you were King of the North, I imagine you know more than me about it, I only have stories to inform me, sadly."  
  


"White walkers are not stories, my Lady," Jon stated, remembering Ben's words, "But I'm glad you grew believing they were."

* * *

"So it seems you two got on well, then," Ben appeared by her side after she dealt with her hundredth small talk of the night. 

Both hold a goblet on hands and looked at the other with understanding.

"We made a sacrifice for the sake of Serena," she clarified before looking Serena through the Hall and finding her speaking, or actually listening to Tormund, with Jon by her side. Daenerys could see the longing on his eyes.

"So you sacrificed yourself on Serena's behalf," Ben asserted, downing dangerously closer to her left ear, "What's his sacrifice?"

Dany knew Ben when she was barely starting with the commercial fleet. Behind his aspect of an eternal wanderer, there was an intelligent man who needed to put his richness somewhere. He chose her and Great Black for what she would always be grateful for, though she knew Ben never did a bad investment. He was aware it was a matter of time for the fleet to succeed thanks to her strategy to use the Roynar as her principal communication channel between Western Essos and Eastern Essos. She never told him, though, she used Jorah's letter explaining the process to cure greyscale to negotiate with the Shrouded Lord. 

It took some time for her to fully understand and trust in his intentions. After all, she couldn't give away her faith in anyone besides Grey Worm. She didn't even give her true name at first, and her darkened hair hid well who she was. With some time, long years actually, Ben proved above all things a smart, witty man. 

It didn't escape from her, the fact he wanted more than a good investment now. Daenerys did not exactly summon him but she would be lying if she said she wasn't conscious he would be coming at the news of her marriage with Jon. It was unfair but he knew she first needed his mind, and only time would say if things could escalate.

"I disgust him," Dany gave the simple and direct answer. 

Ben shrieked with laughter.

"It hasn't born yet the man who can disgust you, Daenerys," he whispered playfully while she pulled him off with a hand above her shoulder, "Not even your nephew." He then walked to face her. The other reason she never yielded to his charm was because he was stupidly similar to Jon, in some extent. The round face with eyes perpetually saddened and the beard always in the middle of being too much. He was taller, though. "My heart shattered when I heard the news. Do you enjoy my suffering, Daenerys?"

He wasn't mysterious about it either.

"You are not that important," she derided his allegations, passing him by. 

"But enough for you to receive me in your home? where you lay with your husband every night?

Daenerys restrained herself from laughing. 

"I need your mind, your ideas and a friend to remember me of good times," she remarked. 

"You know we can do much more than remembering," he was by her side again, "I can make you forget the past and fond to new memories," suddenly her stare went back to Jon, somehow her mind making the connection between the word past and him, and what she found is a strange scene of him speaking with this young lady she remembered ushering at some point but not her name. "All of us need passage," Ben added, switching to see what she was seeing with an amusing smile on his face.

This time, she scoffed, her humor soured.

"Please, limit yourself to the task I handed you over." 

* * *

It took Jon by surprise that Serena, after announcing that she would retire, invited him to accompany her to her tower. He bid farewell to Lady Felissa, who kindly answered several questions about the current situation of the kingdoms and the court, and followed Serena and her escort along the way to her chambers.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled, out of nowhere.

"What?"

"About the brooch," she swallowed, pausing her speech and speaking ceremonial as Dany used to do, "I liked it and I liked you decided to give it to me."

Jon braked in the middle of the hallway. Serena stood some steps forwards but turned around to looked at him, concerned.

"I gave it to you because it's part of who you are," Jon stated, "Your mother told me she never denied you of this part of you..."

"She never denied me from the truth, but that doesn't mean I want to be one of you, one of the Starks."

It was a blunt declaration he didn't see coming.

"Your sister betrayed and undermined my mother and you did nothing but putting and knife in her heart!"

"I...," he was left wordless.

"No, let me finish, Jon Snow." And all Jon saw was Daenerys in her. "You hated her because she loved you still when you learned both shared blood. Guess what, I am your daughter and I am your cousin and that's also a pretty confusing truth for me, but I am Targaryen of Old Valyria, and my family was as good as evil as the Starks themselves. Their inbred didn't make them worse than the Starks, your people were also conquerors and murderers. I mean no offend you, but how do I came to love you as my father or family when you see us as abominations?"

It was enough for Jon.

"I do not see you, any of you two, like that," he spat, approaching her slowly while her guard took his hand to the handle of his dagger. Jon did not care. "I love you, more than I love myself."

There was soreness in Jon's voice and even greater confusion in Serena. However, she was finally demonstrating more than coldness.  
  


"I have grown as a bastard, and the Starks were all I knew when I was a child, so be part of their pack was all I ever desire. The only place where I felt I belonged to," he was careful with his next statement, knowing how fiercely protective she was with Daenerys, "Until I met your mother, and she was a new brand world I wished I could belong to. But all my beliefs and understanding of life crumbled, suddenly when where at the edge of the end of the world."

Jon let out a burst of graceless laughter, feeling defeated. 

"I committed terrible mistakes in the name of honor, in the name of duty. I acted cowardly with your mother. I saw things I disapproved, and instead of stopping it before it escalated to the point of no return I let her feel adrift and abandoned." 

Serena scowling was sad, he can see the hurt in her expression.

"What I did later was because she was willing to harm more people, more children like you and I just...couldn't see other way but I regretted it, I swear that I thrust the dagger and a second later, I regretted it and I've been twelve years wishing to have never done it."

He took a deep breath and finish saying, "Judge me and hate me for it but do not say I hate or abhor you because it is not true."

A lonely tear fell down her daughter's face, and he had to restrain the urge to grab it and melt into an embrace. He really wanted to hug her.

"People judged her because of her father, our grandfather. People will judge me because of them too, will call me names, if they are not already doing it," she stepped closer with eyes that were the same as his but with the certainty in them, he only saw in Daenerys. "I am not mad, and I am not evil."

"You are not."  
  


* * *

It was perhaps the worst moment for him to knock at her office door. She was dealing with the news of another attack on the gold road.

"What do you need?" she asked Jon, who stood upright in front of her desk. He never accepted taking the damn seat.

“You told Serena I think you abominations.”

She stopped writing her report and watched him baffled.

“What are you talking about?”

“She believed I think you and her abominations and that’s why she felt uncomfortable calling me her father. Why you had to tell her such a lie?”

“I did not tell her that,” she snapped, “And who you are to berate me about how I raised my daughter?” 

“Our daughter!” he corrected her, “I am her father.”

She couldn't believe what he was claiming. Or where such a grievance could come from. 

"Twelve years and you still just assuming. I did not tell her that you think her an abominations. How I would tell something like that to my own child? I had to explain to her about the Targaryens and how people in Westeros perceived our ways. She also read it in her books. But I never spoke ill words of you to her."

"It is not true," he grouches. 

"What part it's not true?"

He walked to hover over her, who was sitting. Of course, her guards also removed to make him known that he was exceeding the limits.

"That I see you in that way. I didn't know who I was anymore and what I wanted. But it was never about that or whatever you think it was. I loved you and had known that you were with child, if you had told me, I would have married you and stay by your side."

She rapidly dismissed him, ignoring her own heartache. I wanted your love not your duty, she wanted to scream at him but wouldn't give him that satisfaction. 

"I don't care about what you have to say now, Jon. It doesn't even matter, anymore, our relation is a trifle after what came next. And the fact that you believe yourself with the right to grumble about something it's just insulting and proves me again how little I knew from the man I thought you were."

"And you?" he made the same question, squinting at her, "Do you know how I felt watching you betray all I think you were?"

She looked at him with contempt.

"We didn't know each other, and now it doesn't matter anymore. Get out of my sight."

* * *

"I have a question for you."

Daenerys was still contemplating Ben's suggestion to negotiate a tax withdrawal with the lords to realign the royal army. Currently, they did not have too many men, and they urgently needed to placate the riots and assaults on the main roads.

"Make your question," Dany conceded.

"Your Lord husband, former male heir to the now gone Iron Throne. Last male heir of House Stark, because we know the cripple king can not produce any child. And yet he holds nothing, no lands, no richness of any kind?"

For someone who appreciated riches too much, a frightful lifestyle sounded.

"Jon renounced to his birthright," Dany replied, "He never accepted it actually. And having pledged himself to the Night's Watch again, for my alleged assassination, he also lost any right bestowed upon him," or so was the Westerosi customs. Dany couldn't know if, had the Great Council know in time Jon's lineage they would have recognized his birthright. 

"It seems to me he is a man who gives no importance to the material world," he concluded rightly. 

"He does not," Dany agreed, "Jon is devoted to the values of his family, the Starks, honor, duty, self-sacrifice and cold," her posture changed when the tension grew on her, "A Northman to the bone."

"A Northman in the South," Ben mocked, "So strange and lost as his direwolf rounding the castle, don't you think?"

"What do you mean?"

"He seems misfit here in the South," he explained, always so lightly, "Might that's the reason he never accepted his birthright. A man raised between ice and wolves would never learn to live between fire and dragons."

She let out a breath, defeated. He was right. 

"He wants and has the right to try," Dany sounded almost like Jon's backer, "He doesn't have to choose."

"Oh, my sweet Daenerys," Ben said between a cackle, "He already chose when he couldn't choose you."

* * *

As Vizi untangled her hair, Muña entered her chamber with a tired smile on her face. That expression shift to concern when she saw the white bundle of hair recumbent on her bed.

"What does Ghost here, Serena?" 

Innocently, she stroked his thick fur, replying, "He likes to be with me."

"Serena, he is a direwolf. He needs to be in the North, with other wolves." 

There was no case, she was enthralled and not attending to the fact he was becoming lethargic.

"Jon said he can stay!" she protested with a giggle.

Muña dismissed Vizza and moved to comb her hair. 

"Jon wants you to be happy, even at the expense of this poor animal, my love."

Her smile disappeared. Or rather faded into a dubious pout.

"He loves me?"

"He loves you," she said with conviction. 

Serena didn't know what to do with that truth.

"I'm scared of his love," she confessed, arching her eyebrows in the same way her mother used to do. "Why if his love does to me what it did to you?"

Her mother brought her between her arms and assured her. 

"You will always have me, do not forget that, my love," then she soothed her stern expression to something like understanding. "Might Jon's love for me was not enough to save me from my darkest self but I know he is protective and doting with his own, and he already considers you his family. You must not fear his love."

Her mother speaking such words, it had to mean something, Serena thought. 

* * *

He jumped out of bed at the sound of a knock at his door where he found Dany waiting on the other side. 

"Can we speak?" she asked.

Jon felt baffled. It has been over three moons and she has never been the one approaching him. 

"Of course," he agreed, walking into the aisle while she moved away, to the opposite end. This time Grey Worm wasn't there but a small escort who kept waiting at the end of the hallway with their backs on them.

Before he could begin asking for forgiveness for having overstepped, Dany went ahead,

"After I returned, the first thing I had in mind is that I wished not having return, at all, because next thing I knew is that I was killed by the man I loved, might the only one I loved truly and thoroughly." 

As she spoke his heart accelerated, stopped and took that rhythm again.

"Then the red priestess, Kinvara is her name, told me I was with child and I felt used. As if you had just used me for your pleasure, to win your wars and have a good time meanwhile..."

"Dany...," he didn't want to allow her to hold such a misinterpretation of their time together. 

"Do not interrupt me," she stated and it reminded him of Serena. "What for you just mean a new adventure, for me what's always more. You killed me and you moved on, but for me whatever we have, false or truth, from my part, it meant something and Serena's is the living reminder of it. Of love. Of the love I felt for you," she avoided seeing him at the eye and moved her hands nervously to the point Jon felt the urgency to make her stop, though he didn't. "So, I have to do something or waste my second life crying because of my failure as a queen and as a person. My life was not the last thing I lost. Drogon bonded with Serena at some point during our deaths and resurrections," and Jon felt tears clustering in the corner of his eyes, "And for a time, I hate myself so much that I start suffering...in other ways. In the Targaryen way. Madness. I am mad."

"Dany, I'm so sorry," he said with so much regret and ache in mind, "You are not mad."

Instead of fear as he saw in Serena's countenance, Dany was determined to believe in her assumption. 

"I am. I...sometimes my body shakes uncontrollably, my heart races unbridled and I feel like I'm dying. Just like when I was actually dying, seeing you, unable to understand why it had to be you. How did I let it happen? How I couldn't prevent it?" 

She was speaking like chiding herself for it.

"It's for me. You are scared of me," Jon inferred. 

"I am scared of what I became because I allowed you to be that for me," she stated bluntly, "Serena believes that my love for you it was what killed me, and I couldn't say otherwise because I don't know if it's not true...If I hadn't loved you, I would have been the one shoving a knife in your heart."

He wished she had.

"And look at me here again exposing myself in this way," she threw back her head and cackled loudly but in her eyes, Jon saw grief and sadness, "A madwoman."

He wanted to reach her desperately and tell her otherwise. 

"You are not mad. You are just human, and whatever person in your place with a dragon would have done the same." 

"Flimsy excuse. You did kill me in the end."

Jon sucked in a sharp breath. 

"You are not mad, Dany," he repeated but Dany was already ignoring him.

"Your brother saw Serena being queen. What he doesn't know is how that will happen, that's why I agree with all of this, to clear the road for her instead of having another senseless reconquest that will only bring her woes and misfortune."

Everything acquired a new significance for him. It was not just about rectifying her mistakes and his, but about preventing the consequences to fall upon their child. He imagined Dany, alone, with a child who held the power to destroy cities at will. The knowledge what had cost to her same power. 

"Let me speak, now," Jon begged, seeing her lost in her thoughts and squeezing her hands with jittery. He sniffed and started at the view of King's Landing. Twelve years later, and everyone moved on except for them. "I don't know why you did what you did. At first, I thought it was grief but you were so certain that killing little children in their mother's arm was the right choice that Tyrion's words seemed right. But now you stand here, in front me and you go day by day doing things right and being a reasonable person, which makes me believe I was the stupidest man for not having tried harder to bring you back when you lost your way. That's not what someone who says that loves you does. That's not what someone who is your family does."

She averted his gaze. 

"I did not move on from that day, Dany. I spent all these years dreaming with that day and filling my self with regret and contempt."

Dany looked up to meet his tormented eyes and Jon saw that she was afraid to believe him, just like Serena.

After a long moment of silence between the two, Dany eased the tension in her shoulders and shut down her eyes with deference.

"Swear to me in the name of your gods you will protect her and never, _never_ , inflict any harm upon her. No matter what comes or what she becomes. Your honor and duty will be sworn only to her."

He didn't need to think twice.

"I swear it," he pledged his sacred oath, "in the name of the Old Gods."

"Fine," Dany stated, still he noted doubt in her eyes, "As from tomorrow, you will instruct her with a sword and no escort will be needed it. I still will have her guarded but Brown Fox and the other guards will not intrude when you approach her."

A great relief went through his body but he avoided being too excited, more now that he understood how complicated the situation was for her.

  
Jon has been belittled and degraded by many people throughout his existence. Seeing that same rejection in the eyes of a person who had had so much faith in him once, was devastating.

  
He didn't know why he did it at that moment , but he reached out a hand and rested it on her intertwined ones. Unlike the previous times they touched since their reunion, where they were enforced by protocol and appearance, this was meant to break with all the limits imposed on their relationship. 

If she had commanded one of her guards to beat him for daring, it would have hurt less than seeing her shudder at his approach and withdraw reluctantly from his touch.

She turned on her heels and go.

* * *

Finally, she got her own sword lessons.

Now she understood why her cousin used to leave the training disgruntled. Jon was relentless when it came to teaching and didn't have the greatest patience. It seemed perfect to her, and although she wanted to turn around and send the wooden sword against his head at times, she enjoyed the effort and discipline imposed on her.

"If I call you father, I would have to call you that way always?"

It was an unexpected question. Not even she saw it coming.

Jon was scared but responded with certainty.

"You can call me as it please you, except your cousin. I'm your father. You're my daughter. End of story."

Well, Serena thought, stretching her aching arms once more in a defensive position. The truth was that she didn't enjoy remembering that detail either.

"Very well, _father_ ," and she added a jocular tone at the end to highlight the word that sounded strange in her mouth. "When we're in front of people, you'll be _father_. When we are just us, you'll be Jon Snow."

She spun around before seeing Jon's smile.

* * *

"I need your signature," Dany announced bursting in the Royal Chamber where his grace, King Bran was, as always, staring through the windows enthralled with his own supernatural mind.

"You have decided who the Master of Coin will be," Bran affirmed. 

"I did." 

"And are you positive that it is a good choice?"

He usually does not question her decisions, as he didn't with Tyrion in the past. And other kings have done before him. The Hand is the real power, they said.

"Are you suggesting he is not?"

"I don't suggest. When I need to say something, I say it. I can't do otherwise," he moved to get the quill, a strange movement Dany noted, for a person who spends his days mostly inert, "But you have your own will," he peeked at the Royal Decrees in his desk, and slightly smiled. "You also found a Master of Law, I see."

Dany did not respond to that. Not that she felt dubious of her decision, it was just that Bran still stirred some sense reluctance in her. 

"Thank you," Daenerys said before nodding and acknowledging him, "Your grace."

Before she could leave, Bran spoke at last time.

"Daenerys," he called, and she turned around to meet with a earnest expression, "House Rosby is trying to get her heir to seduce Jon."

She looked at him confused and baffled.

"Are you telling me this because...?"

"I just say what it needs to be said."

"Very well, then," she decided, "Let your brother prove to be the righteous man he believes himself to be."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to change the date of Serena's birthday because I'm stupid and I did the maths WRONG. 
> 
> Do not worry for the new characters introduced, they will not stay that much.
> 
> Next chapter: Drogon reappears.


	13. Estranged Child

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A clash in the family. Confusion. The return of an estranged child and the departure of another.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are two reasons why I took my time with this chapter. The first one is that I tried (and failed) to make an outline in order to define how many chapters this story will have. For now, I'm still having trouble getting into the third and final part. I guess I'm better at improvising than planning. The good news is that the next chapter, and the one that follows, are almost finished. I had planned to finish those two before updating this one but I think the wait has been long enough. 
> 
> The other reason is that I've been reading a few other stories from the tag (resurrection fics are my favorites) and was surprised (and intimidated) by the amount of negative or intrusive comments. The truth is that for me it is a pleasure to read the different interpretations that people make of what could be a continuation of this story. The worst part is the negativity comes mainly from anons or users who have not written a single story. 
> 
> For my part, I like to finish what I start so no matter how many comments try to discourage me, I'm going to finish this. I will continue to moderate the comments because, unless it's constructive criticism, I don't want the comments full of insults or childish discussions about who is better or worse Jonerys fan.
> 
> Another clarification (because it is something that I have also read in the comments of the other stories): be patient, the romance is coming. Only about two or three more chapters of angst and semi conflict and then the reconciliation.
> 
> Enjoy the chapter and stay safe :)

**XIII.**

**Estranged Child**.

"How many languages do you know?"

In the middle of training with Serena, a bad swing caused a sprained ankle and she began to curse in languages that Jon supposed could only be High Valyrian or some dialect of Dothraki. He'd caught snatches of the conversation with her guards and servants and noticed that she was fluent in more than two languages. Her voice when speaking in the common tongue was much softer than any northern accent but extolled with Essosi extravagance. Same as Dany's. Then, when she communicated with her Dothraki servants, she seemed to growl the words.

Her Valyrian was the one that most cherished the tone of her voice, as it was probably the language in which Dany spoke to her until she was old enough to learn others. The more he learned about his daughter the eager he became to know about the time missed. 

"I know many words," she hissed when Jon was wrapping the band around her ankle. "Don't be a brute!" she bellowed.

Jon chuckled, "You won't have time to complain while in battle, Serena."

She opened her mouth to answer but repressed herself, smiling instead.

"In how many battles have you been?" she asked in return.

"In far more than I'd have liked to."

"And you survived each one," she emphasized with a grimace, "you better make me the best swordswoman of Westeros or these classes would make no sense."

"I don't think a queen would need that."

"What do you mean? Queen Visenya, remember?"

"You right, I forgot her," Jon admitted and let her retire her leg from his lap so she could stand. "It's all for today, will I see you at supper?"

Serena walked some steps with difficulty. The idea that Dany would think it was his fault crossed his mind but he didn't panic about it. Something about their latest exchange told him she was slowly moving on from her hostility, which he knew she was entitled to hold against him, in order to protect Serena. 

"Sorry, Jon, not tonight," Serena apologizes, taking her training sword and some scattered things she has brought. "I will sup with Muña and Ben," she slipped off without much care. 

His humor felt flat to the ground. 

"Do not be," and he smiled reassuringly. 

Before walking back to his room to prepare for dinner, Jon strayed to the king's solar.

"I have something to ask you," he announced to his brother after Bran dismissed Ser Podrick Payne.

"You are free to ask," he replied.

"If you had known about her existence before, would you have told me?"

Bran mused for a few moments, watching him closely before answering,

"As soon as I told you the truth about your identity."

"And it ruined my life," Jon retorted. 

Bran scoffed.

"Might you think so," he squinted at his older brother, "Or might it just set your path in a different direction. It brought you here, married with Daenerys after you fathered her a child."

It was a way of looking at it, Jon thought. A few months ago, he didn't even feel like walking out of bed and now he had the most incredible, beautiful reason to be alive.

A mistake that had haunted him for years that he had a chance to redeem now.

  
_So why did he feel like something was wrong?_

"She has a lover who happens to know my daughter better than me," he voiced out as if replying to himself.

Bran's face turned to his earnest expression. 

"You came here to ask me about Serena but you want to know if Daenerys is being unfaithful," he half-smiled, "I'll be using my power for very selfish reasons."

Jon felt ashamed because he was right. He has never been a man who left his feelings so exposed.

He got up and started to retreat when Bran stopped him.

"She is not being unfaithful to you," he stated, and after a pause in which his heart jumped, he added, "but she is considering it."

Jon frowned. 

"Now you read minds too?" he inquired. 

"No. I just observe."

* * *

That week the Unsullied had to deal with an emergency outside of Red Keep, so luckily Serena had the opportunity to move around the castle at ease without feeling the jaded look of the soldiers every time she got lost and had to retrace her steps.

If her mother knew that she was at such a high and remote level, trying to find some trace of the old treasures of the Targaryens, she would surely lock her in her tower until the dragons again surfing the skies of the Seven Kingdoms.

What she least expected to find was her cousin Eddard. Crying.

She never had many friends, only a few children in the Braavosi marketplace with whom she hung out to play jars and pearls at the streets, never too far from the vigilance of Brown Fox or Grey Worm.

"What are you doing here? And why are you crying?"

The boy hadn't noticed her enter the abandoned gallery where he had made his solitary hiding place. He stirred when he saw her.

"Get out of here, Serena!" he shouted at her.

Serena did not shrink. 

"Why are you crying?" she insisted. They have barely known each other but Serena was always more talkative than the younger child. 

"Because I want to be alone!"

"People do not cry because they want to be alone," she objected. 

"You are annoying!" he claimed before passing by and trying to escape from her. Serena went trotting behind him.

"Are you homesick?" she asked him, then. 

The boy with auburn hair wheeled his face to face her, appalled.

"What do you want, Serena? Leave me alone!"

"When my mother and I leave our house in Braavos I always feel homesick, you know. Is that it, you miss Winterfell? My mom says it's a dreary and cold place, but..."

A blow to her chest knocks her to the ground, landing on her butt. She was so taken by surprise that she was speechless and she even felt a little ashamed as tears stung her eyes. Eddard had pushed her.

"Leave me alone, you turd! Ever since you and your mad mother appeared you ruined everything!"

* * *

It was not the first time she attended an overwhelming meeting between people who had too many differences to find common ground. Dissension was more common than consensus, and when she was young, not knowing how to arbitrate between costs and benefits had demanded Daenerys her evenhandedness. 

She rubbed her brow in exasperation as Ben derided at Lord Stallworth's objections. They were discussing the allocation of the funds from their tight budget. Ben had promised to get a good number of investors once he started dealing with the lords of the other kingdoms. Stallworth insisted on the need to boost the local market now that Great Black provided the means of transportation. Dany was still reading the reports of the attacks on the main roads. She didn't want to keep sending the Unsullied to solve these kinds of problems. The meeting was being fruitless so far.

At the apparition of a mild headache, Dany shouted, "Silence, both of you!" ending the discussion. Lord Stallworth blushed while Ben grinned at her. "You have until the Tourney in to bring those investors, otherwise this discussion will take another course. You are all dismissed."

Those present rose from their seats and nodded respectfully before leaving, Ben took a little longer, looking at her for a long time before finally turning and leaving. Dany sighed, not realizing that Ser Davos had also stayed.

Her eyes went to the center of the table, absorbed in her worries. At that moment she wished to return to the mansion in Pentos or the house in Braavos. She really missed the house in Braavos, as she did most of her life until she found it back.

She missed the fresh, salty sea breeze and the nonchalance to be safe and away from Westeros and her past life. Past mistakes.

"May your grace needs some company?"

She opens her eyes and finds Ser Davos watching her.

"That's not the way to address me," she chided him with a mild smile. She's grown apprehensive of that title. She was not worthy of it anymore, nor she wanted.

"Old ways are hard to kill."

"Not _that_ hard."

Ser Davos sucked in a sharp breath, catching the implication.

"One of my greatest regrets about that time was never seating to speak with you about some of the little stuff I know," he says, this time doing as he's telling and pouring two cups of wine. "I am an old, dying man -,"

Dany took his hand.

"You are just in the dawn of your life, Ser Davos."

The old man laughed.

"As you are," he drank from his wine before Dany, savoring what she guessed was Tyrion's supply. "Yet, I see no light in those eyes of you. As I don't see it in _his_."

Dany's mood soured at the mention of Jon. As she did most of her life in Essos after he killed her and she came back, she was doing her best to ignore his existence and live day by day pretending the scar in her chest wasn't hurting her still. 

She reclined on her chair, bringing with her the cup of wine.

"It's late for that," she stated, "Very late."

Ser Davos growled in disapproval. 

"I don't think it's never late for you. You two, _three_ , are too special."

"I believed I was special once," Dany snapped, "I believed we both were. That's what I told him just before his knife had reached my heart."

Again, he recoiled at the memory of that terrible moment. 

"What would you have done in his stead?" he asked, shyly. 

Dany sipped and sighed. 

"That's the saddest part," she said, lamenting her former and foolishly in love self from the past. "I didn't want to ever return, I wish I haven't. I don't my want daughter to be queen, I don't want to be here." 

She spoke each word from the bottom of her heart.

"Listen, woman. It must be a reason why you are here today and now. A reason for that red god for having to give you a second chance of life." 

Dany shook off his words and good intentions.

"Sometimes things happen because they just happen, Ser Davos. I also believe there was a reason for my children to exists but Viserion and Rhaegal just died like any other beings. And Drogon..." she trailed off as she remembers that day. "Was that his purpose?" 

Silence loomed over them. 

After the wine in their cup is emptied, he was the one to hold on her hand.

"Do you regret what happened that day?"

A tear escaped the corner of her eye.

"I do. With all my heart," she confessed, before adding, "But I regret many things before that, too." 

"Him...?"

She did not reply for a moment, thinking about it. 

"I can't," she concluded, "Without him, I wouldn't have Serena. But I do regret having begged for the leftovers of his love and let that need brought me down." She stood up and walked in front of the archway to the balcony, with the view of King's Landing. "Jon and I have met our purpose and that's all. Bran's vision foretells a queen sitting on a throne of weirdwood and dragonglass. That's all that binds us, and it must always remain like that for her sake." She turned around to face Ser Davos' contemplative expression. "She owns my heart. Every beat of me. She is my reason and the day she is truly safe, I must depart from this world because I no longer belong between the living. Might he does the same."

* * *

"Where were you?" Dany scolded Serena who arrived late for their journey to Hayford where a Tourney was to be held. It was another one of those events where they were supposed to redeem the Crowns' image.

Jon could read in his child's face something was not well with her mood, usually always up at these hours of the day.

"Did you know Red Keep has an attic?" she changed the subject as her mother tried to clean off the dust in her gown. He smiled a little without noticing. 

"Serena, where were you? We've been looking for you for hours, look at what you've done with your dress," Dany complained, getting up from her squatting position. 

"Mama, I need to speak with you," she said. 

It felt odd hearing her calling Dany that way for the first time. Not Muña, not Mother. Jon felt like an intruder there.

"We'll talk later," Dany cut her.

It seemed as if Dany had noted it too because she turned to see at Jon with annoyance. She walked towards him and for a moment he thought she came to hit him or something like that. Instead, Dany put her hands on the collar of his suit and swirled the material until it was accommodated. 

A whole gamut of emotions run through him while seeing her carry out the action. It was something she hadn't done until now: approaching him abruptly and invading his personal space as...as any wife would do under normal circumstances to fix her husband's attire.

She stepped back, beholding the view of her child and husband, both dumbfounded. For a moment their eyes met, and the confusion conveyed.

He thought they'd be riding to Hayford but the moment they stepped outside Red Keep there was a carriage waiting for them. Dany offered him to take his own mount instead but he refused, wanting to stay the most he could with them. He took the seat beside Serena and her mother sat across them with Grey Worm zealously placed by her side. 

It was a long, boring journey that got Jon rueing not having taken a horse instead. Serena shared the same regret tough the option was never granted to her.

"Serena, cover your window," Dany asked, or command their daughter when they downed the main street towards the Gate of the Gods. 

"I want to see the city," Serena protested.

"Serena," her mother repeated with a more severe tone. 

"Fine!" the girl yielded, leaning back on her seat with her arms crossed protectively against her chest. Jon found the exchange amusing, and he could see traces of Arya's behavior in his own daughter.

"There's no much to see and the smell is awful," Jon tried to ease the mood. 

After they passed the gates and leave the city behind, Serena opened the window again, gaining herself another stare of disapproval from Dany. Honestly, Jon did not understand her general grumpiness that day.

After what it seemed hours, Serena broke the silence.

"I found Eddard crying," she said.

Jon winced.

"What? Why?"

"He misses Winterfell," Serena explained, looking at him before veering toward Dany, "I think he should return to his home, Muña."

He also stared at Dany. He found annoyance mixed with surprise and something else he couldn't quite understand. 

"We'll discuss this matter later, I believed I told you."

"When? You are always doing something else!" 

"I'm working."

"Then, let's talk now. I want Eddard gone!"

Jon squirmed in his place at her sudden statement and the assurance with which she said it. Dany also took notice of this hint of despair in her voice.

"Why do you want him gone?" Dany asked.

Serena shrunk back when she noted Dany's rage ignited.

"It's not what I mean..."

"Serena, did he do something to you?"

Jon couldn't avoid but shake at the idea of his nephew doing something harmful to his daughter. 

"No!" she shouted, and he breathed again. 

"Daenerys," he, again, tried to interfere. 

"Snow," Torgo Nudho barked a warning. 

"Would you anybody listen to me?" Serena's thin voice claimed. 

"All of you shut up!" Dany demanded with her authoritative composure. He hadn't forgotten that. "Serena, reply to my question. Did Eddard do something to you?"

Serena was speechless and his heart skipped a beat. 

"He just...push me," she winced at the memory like it really hurt her. "But I was annoying him," she added rapidly. 

It wasn't as worse as he thought.

"I'm sure he did not mean..." 

"Do not speak!" Dany snapped at him, surprisingly. 

"Why you don't let him speak," his daughter said, not defending him really but going against her mother. "If he is going to be my father and your husband he needs to speak too. Someone needs to speak besides you!"

"Serena!" she scolded her one last time and Jon noted the air heating inside the carriage. He was definitely rueing not having taken that damn horse. 

"Fine!"

The rest of the journey they were in silence while the tension remained unscathed. Dany spluttered two or three short sentences at them, indicating that they should behave in front of people as if he were a damn boy of ten. 

Lady Ermesande Hayford was younger than them but carried herself with the same strength than any other old lady of the realm, treating them as if they were the monarchs and granting them the most spacious solar of the castle as if she known about the sham of a family they were.

* * *

The wind felt lighter from that hill, and for a moment she was shifted back sitting astride on Drogon's back, soaring through the skies and rising so high that the troubles seemed as small as everything below them. Losing the bond with Drogon was like losing a hand, she could still remember the feeling of having it.

The air shifted with the essence of something sweet, a sign of _his_ presence.

  
"I would like to speak to you," he required with his harsh, northern voice. "Alone," he added.

Dany lifted an eyebrow and side-glanced at Torgo Nudho, who wrinkled his nose. 

"You think yourself with the right to ask for that?" he grunted and Dany turned around before it could escalate. People in the stronghold of Hayford were still curious about them and she was sure their eyes were cautiously upon them.

"Daenerys, please," Jon pleaded, ignoring Torgo Nudho's aggression. "I don't have any weapons."

Dany took a deep breath and opened her mouth but Torgo was already warning.

"No," he said.

"Stay close," she ordered, finding no other option. "A false move and I let you do with him whatever you want," she promised.

Some seconds passed before he had finally abandoned his hard posture and extended his knife to her, in the most concealed way. 

" _Don't trust him, and remember what I taught you_ ," he reminded her in their language, before passing by Jon, hitting his right shoulder and going to stand some feet away.

When Jon approached she tightened her grip on the handle of the knife, not because she believed he would hurt her - she knew he would not, since she hasn't given him a reason to do it. It was more about standing that close to the person that ended her life. She wondered then if that was the reason why he did not forgive his own murderers. 

"We were already alone once," he referred to their encounter some weeks ago.

"When it was not supposed to happen."

She returned to her place at the top of the hill to behold the landscape. She knew he would come to her and discuss the matter of his nephew and Serena, but she truly wasn't in the right mind to talk about the children. 

"He thinks I did it in cold blood. That I planned it."

He is Grey Worm, Dany took it. 

"You made him feel like a fool, you hurt his pride, I don't intend to deepen that wound."

"A part of this rational woman in front of me has to understand that the person who spoke to me that day about conquering the world to build a new one above the ashes of the old, is not the same person who is standing here today, as I am not the same man who committed treason."

As the knot in her throat grows, she nods.

"It's true. I'm not that woman anymore," she admitted, before lifting her stare at him with trembling lips. "That woman is dead."

Jon averted her eye. All these years Daenerys had become used to think he was truly sure what he did was right. She imagined him moving on, never sparing time in second thoughts. She was not trying to making feel guilty, at all. She just wanted the line to be well-drawn between them, as that line that she would never cross to seek forgiveness from the citizens of King's Landing.

"Is this going to be our life from now on?" he made _that_ question. 

This time, Dany eluded his eyes.

"The option to leave is still available," she said.

"You know very well that I will not do it. I will not walk away from my daughter's life."

"Then what are you coming to complain about, Jon?" she claimed, exasperated.

"Of this. Of whatever it means to be here today." 

It must be a reason why you are here today and now, Ser Davos also said nevertheless Dany would never believe in those reasons anymore. 

"Our vows at the Septon and before the Heart Tree, they mean nothing?"

_You are my queen, now and always_. She suppressed the pain that emerged in her chest along with the sound of bells ringing in the background.

"Words are words, they are just air flowing between our mouths." 

Dany sighed and turned away from him, saying, "Your nephew cannot return to his mother. Don't allow him to ever touch Serena in that way, again."

* * *

Serena looked away with a little whimper leaving her mouth when one of the lances into the horse's neck, knocking the knight out of the horse and ending the round of the sport they called jousting. Her mother, Jon and her were sitting in a place of honor with a clear view of the brutish event, with Ben sitting behind Muña whispering things to her while Jon tried to ease her bad mood by telling her the story of the time his mother had dressed up as a knight. 

The smell of blood was beginning to come to her senses and make her unsteady. She felt as if something was boiling in her stomach.

"Do you want to go?" Jon asked her, again.

Yes, she wanted to scream but she knew her mother would not allow her. These were people she needed to learn to get away with. Customs she had to adopt as her own, even if she hated everything about it.

Before she could answer, a woman approached them, offering her a handheld fan. She was very beautiful, Serena first noticed. 

"Here, sweetling. It's perfumed and it will ease the stench for you," she explained and the girl found her voice soft as she hasn't heard before. 

"Lady Rosby," Jon greeted the young woman, surprised. "Serena, what do we say?"

For a moment, she forgot the reason for her uneasiness and get hypnotized by the big green eyes of the lady. She took the object from her hand and nodded.

"Thank you, my lady."

"Do not worry. Is this your first tourney? I do remember I couldn't stand the first round when I attended my first one."

She was so sweet, she thought while moving the fan in her face and rapidly catching lavender scent that took her back to Essos and her eternal summers.

"Sadly," Jon spoke, "Blood is one of those smells one can never erase from the senses."

"Excuse me my meddling, my lord, I just saw the young princess here in a bind, and I feel to come over and help her."

"Thank you, Lady Rosby."

Jon smiled and it reminded her of one of those rare gestures he used to keep for her. It made Serena feel odd.

"I am not a princess," she clarified, again feeling the annoyance in her tummy. She wanted to throw up. 

"Oh, I'm sorry, my lady. We are still getting used to calling your mother a Lady. I'm thinking her a Queen, even now. In fact, this family look like true monarchs in my opinion."

Jon laughed. Serena did not find the reason for the amusement in her statement. 

She flinched a little when Jon started speaking with Lady Rosby and turned to look at her mother still hooked in the conversation with Ben. She felt displaced as if she did not belong there and that enraged her to the point tears sting her eyes. 

She did not want to be there anymore. 

Serena shut her eyes and breathed as Muña had thought her to do. When she blinked them open, there was silence and the smell felt different, no longer disgusting but desirable. 

She knew it was him even before she heard his shrill roar break through the air, unleashing chaos around them. There was noise around her, but she ignored it, enthralled in the sweet, calm sensation sprouting through each part of her body. How couldn't she notice before? How couldn't she sense him?

_Drogon_.

" _Serena!_ "

She heard. It was her mother? Or it was Jon? Might it was Lady Rosby or Ben. She did not care. The moment he landed from the skies and burned the dead corpse of the stallion to eat him in one single bite, Serena walked and walked and walked until she was there before him, both staring at the eye of the other. Her heart was swollen with joy. 

If she were asked what was the first feeling she remembers, she would always answer that it was that one. Even before she was born, they became one. Now he came to reclaim her for her abandonment, roaring at her face first before shaking his long, grown neck, to warn everyone around them, including her parents, to stay away.

_Never leave me again_.

Perhaps she said it or maybe it was him, but she vowed so before accepting the crouched shoulder he was offering her, tearing her elegant sky-colored gown in the process and feeling the force of the wind against her face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: looking for Serena.
> 
> Next, next chapter: some flashbacks and something near a reconciliation.


	14. The Warrior Maiden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chaos ensues with the disappearance of Serena and Daenerys suffers a nervous breakdown that reveals to Jon the depth of his damage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I managed to conclude with a more or less decent outline with a total of 25 chapters. 
> 
> Let's hope I keep on track.

**XIV.**

**The Warrior Maiden**

"Lord Jollyfard," Ben whispered, pointing at a chubby man seated by the square's bench. "He holds a very large and important part of the production of those elegant shoes I mentioned to you before. Rich people from Essos love the westerosi skin craft. I see something there."

She was hearing about what he had inquired about Hayford tournament attendees, some of them big shots --as he called them, whose money and business was critical to reviving the Westerosi economy and might making a small profit for Great Black.

She noticed Serena squirming uncomfortably as the joust got particularly bloody. Dany remembered herself at the fighting pits, years ago.

"And you believed you can convince him?" she asked, trying to catch Torgo Nudho's attention but she found him nowhere. "It would mean he should pay more taxes, our lords hate taxes," she kept talking.

Ben scoffed. He also hated them.

"Easy, Daenerys. Everything can work with some little persuasion."

She looked at him full of doubts. Perhaps he was a persuasive man, but the Westeros lords were barking dogs in her little experience.

Dany caught it out of the corner of her eye when that same girl of House Rosby reached over and spoke to Serena, offering her a hand fan. Her hands clasped in her lap and she squeezed them hard to hold in the feeling of strangeness.

House Rosby is using its heiress to seduce Jon, Bran said.

What an unpleasant matter, she thought. She had come around with the idea that something like this could happen but she did not imagine that it would make her stomach twist and her mouth dry.

"Westeros has its charms," Ben commented behind her, catching the same view. Daenerys was quick to take her eyes off the scene. "But I still prefer them blondes," he bragged, making her tense shoulders relax and her lips form a wry smile. His teasing was no longer enticing but hilarious.

A clap of thunder erupted and everyone present shuddered, but Dany knew it wasn't that.

It happened so suddenly that she did not have time to react as she should. Serena crossed the space that separated her from Drogon while Ben wrapped her, trying to contain her and she screamed for her daughter.

Before darkness and nothingness had enveloped her back then, there was a moment where she felt herself swaying in and out of consciousness. It was enough to hear Drogon and his agonizing cry, as well as a snowflake landing on her left cheek as she listened to him sob and hold her limp body.

The worst part was not being able to get out of his grip. She desperately wanted to get away from him as she wanted Ben to let her go now.

"Paghagon. Māzigon arlī, ñuha dāria. Paghagon," his voice tried to bring her back. "Māzigon arlī, ñuha dāria."

Other arms again wrapped around her body but she was not trying to fight against them. 

Come back, my queen. Torgo had never stopped calling her his queen even if she despised the world. 

There were voices and faces around her but Dany only saw a white sky before darkness had taken her again. 

* * *

The last time he saw Drogon, Jon was sure it was the end of his life. An enormous desolation filled his heart when he saw him grieve over his mother's lifeless body, before taking her away and lose forever in the haze of a gray sky. That image was clear in his mind for years. At that time, he didn't know he was saying goodbye to his love but to his unborn child too. As an irony of fate, Drogon returned to take Serena away and allow Jon to feel that desolation again.

If he froze it wasn't out of fear of the beast, which he should fear knowing that there are pending accounts between the two of them, but because of the way Serena threw herself at him without paying attention to the turmoil around them. Her eyes hooked on Drogon's.

  
"Serena!" he and Dany, both screamed as the girl advanced without looking back and Drogon showed his large fangs mottled with the horse's wastes to yell directly at the girl's face.

Jon didn't have Longclaw, and Torgo Nudho couldn't do anything without futilely risking his own life. Daenerys tried to break free of the grip of the man who held her attention all morning as well as he had Lady Rosby 's delicate hands holding him back, weakly. 

The truth is that everyone was sublimated and shocked by the image.

The moment she climbed up his back and leave, Unsullied soldiers surrounded the empty field, taking Dany out of the chaos. Some Gold Cloaks also were there but they'd barely been of use since Dany trusted mainly in her own people.

The moment they were taken inside the castle again, Dany started shouting words in Valyrian to her soldiers before falling down in the ground with Grey Worm taking her away from the curious gaze of those presents, including him, who had to follow them.

They reached their private solar and Dany began breathing fast and unsteady, falling on her knees and making a loud thud with her small body. Grey Worm was there immediately, speaking again words in Valyrian Jon couldn't understand.

Jon's mind returned some weeks ago to his conversation with Dany. 

_I am. I...sometimes my body shakes uncontrollably, my heart races unbridled and I feel like I'm dying. Just like when I was actually dying, seeing you, unable to understand why it had to be you. How did I let it happen? How I couldn't prevent it?_

That was what she told him and now he could see it.

She was sick of the head.

When she fainted again, Grey Worm ordered everyone out of the solar and seeing that he could do nothing more, Jon went to the stables to take the fastest horse he could get.

* * *

After Serena finished tearing the meat of the stallion's bone with her teeth, she vomited the entire contents of her stomach. She felt very thirsty then and the insides of her thighs and the skin under her hands start burning. She was not unburnt like her mother was and the connection with Drogon's mind was disappearing to make room to desperation.

She doesn't know where Drogon took them, though she was certain they were still in Westeros. 

"Drogon," Serena calmly called him. "Drogon, we have to go home." 

She received a lazy whine in response before he shook his neck in negative. He is stretched and rested his huge head on his front legs, in a movement that reminded her of Ghost.

Returning from the intensity of their bond, Serena realized she shouldn't have fled the tournament like that. But she felt so disgusted there that she couldn't resist it. Also, it was hard to say no to Drogon. He had come with every intention to take her back home.

To what he considered _home_.

"No, Drogon, home is Red Keep. We can't return to Essos," she explained, petting the warm scales of her snout. "Drogon," she insisted, feeling the great pain inside him. "I know, big brother. I know." 

This land took everything from you, she said in her mind, where she knew he understood her better than everyone could ever. Viserion. Rhaegal. Mother. 

He wasn't willing to lose Serena too.

"Muña needs us, Drogon," Serena reminded him, for what she knew still in the depths of his being, he knew Muña was still his mother. "We have to go home. To her."

Drogon protested and moved away from her, giving her the definitive answer. It was east or nothing. 

"Drogon!" Serena shouted with discontent, but the beast ignored her. 

She was thirsty and afraid. Her instinct told her to not leave Drogon's side but she was also desperate. Might some steps right around that hill or some trail would appear and take her to a near village, she thought. She's never lost without the guidance of the Unsullied or the Dothraki. What Brown Fox would do? Or Grey Worm? or her Mother? 

Serena started shedding tears, embracing herself at the blowing of a cool breeze.

* * *

Jon returned the next day after spending the entire night covering as much ground as possible, knowing that he would not find her without Dany's guidance of where Drogon could have taken her.

His heart sank at the thought of the beast taking her back to Essos.

When he returned to Hayford, he was surprised by the news that the party had deployed back to King's Landing. At full gallop, the trip back to Red Keep took Jon only half the time.

He arrived at the keep exhausted but knew immediately that he had to search for Bran. They had no more time to lose. Jon was not ignorant of the danger of a dragon flying aimlessly through Westeros, or of a platinum-haired little girl prowling the roads on her own. Serena is just a child of ten and two. Every time he went back in his mind to all the terrible scenarios this could lead to, his stomach twisted and his legs weakened under his weight.

At Bran's solar, there was already a group of Unsullied waiting for his brother to return from his own mind. Jon didn't have to say a single word.

"Uncle Jon!" he heard Eddard coming from behind, opening the gates with a loud thud. "Uncle Jon!" he repeated.

Jon stopped him, grabbing the boy by his shoulder and kept him still. 

"Easy," he dictated, apprehensive. "What are you doing here? Are you okay?"

The boy's eyes sparkled with excitement, which made Jon remember with apprehension the episode Serena recounted on the way to the tournament.

"I heard what happened with Serena. Is it true the dragon came back?" he insisted on his inquiry.

Jon stared at him, amazed. It did not surprise him he already knew about Dragon's appearance, frenzied people around all over the city also knew it.

"Did you hurt your cousin, Eddard?" he then asked him with a stern voice that made the boy recoiled. "Eddard, answer me."

"It was just a push," he replied, his face went pale, "I will apologize to her when we found her."

"You shouldn't have done that, no matter what she had said."

"I push her all the time during practice!"

"That's practice. Out of the training room, she is still a girl and you don't do that to girls, do you understand me?"

Eddard nodded in his low spirits.

"I'm sorry, uncle Jon," he said.

"It's fine, boy," Jon reassured him, shaking the curls of his auburn hair that reminded him of Robb's. "We'll talk later. Go back to your chamber."

But the Stark's heir opposed, "I want to help to find her!" 

"We still don't know where she's gone," Jon explained.

"Did the dragon took her to Essos? Can I go with you?"

Jon did not understand how Eddard ended up so excited about the idea of Drogon since he had been raised by a person who hated everything related to dragons. If Sansa didn't hate him, it was because he had been in part the cause that House Targaryen had almost gone extinct entirely. Almost. 

But then, when Robb and Jon were children they would also love to pretend they were Targaryen kings and princes. 

"She's not in Essos," Bran interrupted. "He took her to the lands of the Reach, near the Goldroad. She is dehydrated. You must find her now before it's too late."

Normally emotionless, this time Bran's voice sounded worried which made the mood in the room even more afflicted.

"Too late for what?" Eddard approached his other uncle.

"The Goldroad is full of criminals and thieves," Grey Worm responded appearing from the entrance just in time. It made Jon wonders about Daenerys' state, but before he could inquire about his wife, the Unsullied turned into Dany's confident, walk over the King and announced, "I must warn to you, I'll kill any man, woman or child that dares to put a hand on her."

Jon had heard through Davos about incidents on the main roads across the continent, but the conflict was more substantial in the South, where food distribution was a matter of life and death.

He instructed his nephew to either stay with Bran or return to his quarters before following Grey Worm to the lowest level of Red Keep where the guard in charge of Ser Brienne usually rested.

"Where are you going, Snow?" Grey Worm stopped him, stoically.

"She is my daughter," Jon replied, simply.

He scoffed.

"You are her murderer, too."

Jon took a deep breath, before answering, "Dany can't be alone, and she won't let me be with her. She will never accept me the way she accepts you. I saw what happened there." He looked at the other man with a resolution. "Serena is my daughter, you like it or not. I can protect her _and_ _I will,_ " Jon emphasized, almost in the same barking way the Unsullied used to address him, before averting his gaze towards the open gates. "But I can't protect Dany, so you must stay here with her."

With a look of deep rancor and reluctance, the man could not deny that Jon was right.

"The Unsullied won't follow you or your orders, is that clear?" he announced, turning around to speak with his men in their language before going back to speak with Jon. "Find her or this place will be burnt and this time you won't get near the Queen."

* * *

In her dreams, she was never alone and that is why she sometimes sought refuge in them when reality contrasted to harshly. However, amidst the voices and laughter of a family, she never knew or lost, there was one thing that made Dany feel safe, and that was the real presence, in dreams and in life, of Serena.

Opening her eyes meant accepting that her arms were emptied of her presence and that there was nothing in her power that she could do to protect her anymore, in the same way, that she lost all her children before her.

She did it when she couldn't pretend any longer. Just in front of her, there was a man seated, his hair dark as it was his beard but instead of dark eyes, his were light as the sky.

"Where is Torgo Nudho?" she questioned him, little enthused by his presence. Nothing would boost her humor.

"It took me hours to send him away to rest," Ben answered, resting his arms on his knees. He looked exhausted. "Your Unsullied commander is loyal. He loves you deeply."

Daenerys inspected herself to realize that she was back in her chamber at Red Keep, therefore at King's Landing. She was changed into a silk nightgown and a robe of the same material, while her braids normally taken up to the crown her head, were spread out and shapeless.

"We only have each other," she replied, lifting the duvet to cover herself better. With this movement she couldn't avoid the view of her scar, which was obviously perceived by his company, making her extremely self-conscious and uncomfortable. She sobbed. "If I lose Serena and Drogon..."

Ben didn't let her continue, he approached with the intention to take her into his arms but she elevated a hand to stop him.

He retreated, sighing.

"Your lord husband and father of your child went to look at for her," he told her after a long minute of silence.

Dany stared at him with eyes open wide.

"Torgo..."

"He wanted to go but he couldn't leave you alone."

A pain crossed her chest again. It was true that she had become, ironically, a dead weight on Grey Worm's shoulders. Neither of them had ever trusted anyone else when it came to her and Serena's safety, but if she had to put Serena's over her, Grey Worm should have done the same.

"You are here," Dany pointed out.

"Yes. I am here."

Again, Daenerys saw longing eyes on her friend and business partner. After Jorah, she didn't think it would be possible to have someone like him by her side again. Incredibly stubborn in his feelings for her.

It would never suffice. 

"I want my child, Ben. I just want my child. I am a weak woman who is dying, always dying. I know your feelings for me, for us, are sincere but I cannot give you anything," she speaks honestly to him. "I gave everything to a man who pierced my heart in the end and now, there's just a little piece of that heart left that just belongs to my daughter."

Ben nodded and got up from the chair, approaching her more slowly this time to put a kiss atop her head.

"I'll wait at the harbor until the last ship had sailed," he said.

* * *

Serena spent the night lying near Drogon's heat and woke up immediately when she stopped feeling him close to her, realizing that he was gone. She assumed he would be hunting, and that she should wait in the same place. However, she was still sore, hungry and thirsty. If she didn't find something to drink soon, she would go insane.

The first thing she did was tear off the rose-shaped brooch from Jon (from her grandmother), and place it inside her boat to prevent someone --if she found someone, that wanted to take it away. Then, what her survival instinct logically told her after years of doing the same with her mother, Serena took a handful of damp earth and covered her silver hair with it.

Then she climbed down the hill.

After what seemed like an eternity, she found a lake and although she felt a little regret, she desperately approached to take some water. She saw some ducks pass near there and bemoaned the fact she wasn't armed with her bow nor her knife to hunt them down.

_Drogon, I'm hungry_ , she pleaded in her mind, hoping their connection wouldn't have faded as it did the last couple of moons they spent apart. 

Nothing happened so she did what her mother once told her about following the course of the water because that means there are people around. But what then? she wondered. How was she going to convince them to help her? What if bad men wanted to hurt her? She had no intention of undergoing such situations and if the time came, and she couldn't control it and she would unleash Drogon's rage on anyone who tried.

She stumbled upon to what appeared to be a small town, reminding her of the villages along the trade roads in Essos. Serena walked down the main road, ignoring the intrusive looks the villagers shot her when they realized she was an outsider. _Please don't notice the hair,_ she pleaded again.

Her stomach growled the moment the smells of unknown foods reached her senses, making her mouth water. She did not remember ever feeling so hungry. However, she did not carry anything of value to exchange for food, except her brooch, which she did not intend to exchange for anything.

"Excuse me," she spoke to the man that was offering the product, she tried not to sound that foreign. "Can I have one? I promise you I will pay you later..."

The man turned around and scoffed. 

"Get out of here, child," he spat.

Serena marched out, thinking that it could have been worse. She reached the other end of the town that turned out to be the main entrance, and some distance from there, she saw a road. She decided it would be better to follow it and pray some to cross ways with some patrol of Unsullied if there were some.

She didn't even walk half an hour when she heard the unmistakable sound of laughing voices behind her. She took a deep breath, speeding up her footsteps and alerting Drogon.

The voices began to grow louder until her gait turned into a jog, and she tripped over the remains of her dress, remembering that her ankle was still healing.

Before she could get up, a hand tightened on her ankle and she screeched in pain, being dragged upside down and turned onto her back to meet a man on top of her. Serena screamed like never in her life, not even like when she flew on Drogon the first time and he slid off a cliff.

Someone else took her arms from behind and she tried her best to escape but they were too strong and big, hurting herself in the attempt.

_Mama_ , she begged in her mind. _Grey Worm_. _Brown Fox_.

_Jon_.

Serena shut her eyes as tears slipped on her cheeks. 

Something hot and heavy fell on her face, and she was first afraid to open her eyes again. When she felt the grip on her arms loosen, and the sound of weapons colliding --slicing, around her, she rolled onto her stomach again and escaped as fast as she could without looking back.

However, she didn't come even a few meters away when she felt herself being held by another person's arms again, so she screamed.

"Easy or I'll cut your throat."

A woman's voice.

Serena met the eyes of the stranger, that were stained with traces of soot, or so she supposed it was. They were big, blue and cold, not like his mother's, warm and friendly. The woman held her still by the back, where she felt the cold edge of her knife and with the other hand, covered her mouth.

  
"Rhena," someone called from behind. "Leave the girl alone, she's been through a lot."

_Rhena_ snorted in discontent and spun her around, hands still threatening her.

  
"She's a lady! look at these clothes and her delicate skin. We could get a good ransom for her."

Her heart raced. Where she had been a few moments before, there were two men, one lying on his own blood and the other rigged by the other woman who spoke while she finished carrying out her action. She was wearing a kind of very light armor that reminded her of the Dothraki. Her hair braided up but roughly, not like her mother's intricate styles.

"Leave her alone now!" the woman mumbled an order.

Behind her, she heard a sound of annoyance before the woman pushed her back onto the ground. Serena fell to her knees and only then did she realize that the man's blood washed her dress and face.

She was trembling, not knowing which of the emotions to make room for.

"Little girl, what is your name?" the woman, the good one, asked her. When Serena didn't answer, she repeated, this time with a strong voice, "Little girl, I'm not asking ya' again."

"Serae," she replied, quickly, and standing up, "My name is Serae."

The woman smirked at her.

"That's a very strange name, but you are also a very strange lady," she says, walking over her. "Tell me Serae, did you know what those poor excuses of men wanted to make to you?"

She nodded. 

"They wanted to rape me."

"Exactly. Men like this do not deserve to live. We killed one for you but this other belongs to you..."

The woman steps aside, revealing the man who had attacked her, with a large cut on his face, even over his left eye and tightly tied to his arms and legs.

Serena wanted to puke right there.

"He should be brought before the King's peace," she said, trying to avoid the sight of him. She couldn't take it.

"The King's Peace," the woman muttered, "There's no King's peace here. We do not treat with the King's envoys, little girl whose name is Serae. Justice must be claimed not reclaimed." She took a knife out of her boot and extended it to Serena. "Have you killed already?" 

She returned to that day in Braavos where she tried to do as much damage to Tyrion Lannister as possible. She was so determined to do justice for her mother back then, and now that she had to do it for herself, all Serena could think of were the boring classes of Mastre Gullwuth about the King's peace.

"My name is Martena, little one. And I'm happy to help you with your first one, then. Go on. Kill him."

Martena pushed her forward, while the woman named Rhena let out a huff.

What else could she do? Right now she was at the mercy of those women and Drogon was nowhere near. A part of her mind told her that this was fine, that he wanted to hurt her. Nevertheless, she couldn't help but imagine what they would say about her in Westeros.

The mad queen's daughter.

The mad king's granddaughter.

Or great-granddaughter?

Serena began to tremble.

Would Jon be disappointed that she didn't follow the law? Was it dishonorable to kill a man without royal authority present? She remembered Lord Varys, who had betrayed her mother right in Jon's eyes, and instead of reporting it to her...he just did nothing.

In the short time that she was in Westeros, she understood why. Things just don't work in the same way. So no matter what she and her mother did, they would always be mad Targaryens.

Her eyes filled with tears and only there did her blood boil.

That man tried to rape me. I am of the blood of the dragon. Men like him don't deserve to die, she told herself.

Serena caught sight of a bow dangling among the things the women brought.

Martena and Rhena. Martena and Rhena. She repeated and repeated.

She turned around and asked, "I..." she stuttered, "May I use your bow?"

They frowned and looked at the other before walking around her to grab the weapon. 

"Don't try anything stupid," Rhena warned, and after with a more serious voice. "Or I will open you from your little mouth until your tummy, understand?"

Serena recoiled at her fetid breath. 

The process was rather quick. She had neglected her bow training since she started using a sword with Jon. She had missed the feeling.

She didn't even have to pay too much attention to what she was doing, because the objective was there.

She breathed and loosened.

The man fell to the ground, the arrow stuck in his right eye.

"See," she heard Martena boasting, "She is a natural warrior." She approached to pat her back, indicating, "Let's go, little girl."

* * *

"Common boy, I know you can find her."

The moment Ghost sniffed at Serena's old bandages, the direwolf shook himself from his torpor and regained his basic instincts.

The Unsullied split into several groups to cover more ground and Jon took Ghost and Tormund in another direction, hoping to be more practical and not have to deal with the hostility of Grey Worm's peers. Neither of them trusted Ghost to succeed but Jon had already done a good amount of ranging alongside him.

Of course, this was a totally different place, as Tormund expressed with different words, "This place is shit."

His red-haired companion had insisted on going with him, because he cared for Serena and because he felt suffocated in Red Keep.

"Let me understand you then," he continued speaking to the chagrin of Jon, who would have preferred a silent ride. "The dragon now responds to the girl, so why hasn't Dragon Princess flown back to the filthy city?"

"I do not know, Tormund. But my daughter has not returned, and there are castles that were equipped with Ballistas after the attack in King's Landing." He released a shaky breath as he saw Ghost trotting in front of them. "A lucky shot and my daughter would fall from the sky." Like Rhaenys Targaryen.

"Yeah, this place is shit. Why would somebody want to enrage a fuckin' dragon?" he said, "Wonderful beasts. I do remember when I first saw your Dragon Queen coming from the sky with the three of them," he laughed thought it sounded like a growl, "I tell ya', she would have been mine if it wasn't 'cause the big lady got my heart back then. Did I tell ya' I saw her? Oh, she still looks magnificent in her plate armor..."

He went on to speak about Ser Brienne. It was better than hearing him speaking about Daenerys. Until now, Jon had avoided the mere thought of her.

She was so fragile, so defenseless when she got sick. And at their wedding night, the way she almost fainted when she realized they were all alone.

You did this. You got her like this. You took everything from her, even her last strength. That was what he told himself.

If something happened to Serena, he would lose Dany too. It wasn't like he had her now but at least she was alive and apparently moving on from their awful past. He cannot lose them again, he cannot because this time it would be him also falling into madness. 

* * *

"My guess is that you're not from our lands, are you? You come from Essos. Lys, I can imagine by the hair."

They didn't want to tell her where they were going, but because of the long extension of grassland, Serena supposed that they were somewhere south of King's Landing.

Martena made her sit on the same saddle with her. 

  
"How do you know about Lys?"

"I'm not a turd, girl, I can read maps."

"I don't belong anywhere."

"Oh," Martena laughed. "And who bought you this fancy dress, then? Your father must be a lord and your mother a lady. My suggestion is an attack on Goldroad and now they are dead. You are not the first nor the last."

Serena's mind went back to her parents, Lord and Lady when they were once king and queen. Dragonriders. Legends. And now they were simple people pretending to be a family and courting other people right in the other's face.

  
"I don't think he ever loved you," she said to her mother once, hoping she would tell her otherwise. But her Muña never answered and now she saw that it was true.

Jon never loved her mother.

"My people is...in Crownlands," she replied to Martena to forget the bitter thought.

  
She did not ask her anything else and share her fruit. Serena received the food as if she hadn't eaten in weeks, although it only passed a few hours from her previous meal.

  
When night fell, they arrived at another village, almost the same as the one she has previously visited. Although she saw fewer men and more children in this one.

  
They looked at her strangely as she advanced between them towards a kind of shed where Martena asked her to take a bath before seeing the Great Mother.

Then Rhena appeared, rushing her with a strong grip in the arm toward a secluded sector where there was a tub with water.

"Enjoy the icy water. When you're done, we'll feast while your fate is decided," she warned, a grim smile on her face.

They gave her a brown dress, precarious but not uncommon for her who had lived between Dothrakis and Lhazareens.

Hours later, they took Serena to another place, a temple seemed to her, where she could hear the shouting of people celebrating at the feast taking place.

Great Mother turned out to be a large elderly woman, sitting in the middle of a large table, who looked at Serena from head to toe with an apathetic expression.

  
"Very rare beauty, I see," the old woman weighed in.

  
"She would do good coin on a brothel. Let's sell her!" Rhena shouted, receiving some cheers.

"She said her people are from the Crownlands," Martena interrupted, just as jarring.

"Oh, so she's important," the old woman spoke again, raising an eyebrow.

"She is not an ordinary girl, Great Mother. She knows how to aim an arrow. She has been trained."

"She is miserable and short," Rhena scoffed. "She couldn't even defend herself against those men."

"Because she is a child!"

They continued fighting among themselves. Serena desperately wanted to say something, but what? The moment she mentioned that she was the daughter of Daenerys Targaryen, they were going to kill her. If she told them she lived with King Bran ... as far as she suspected, they weren't fond of him either.

Drogon, she called him in her mind. Drogon.

* * *

Tormund's laughter was shrill as they perched behind some rocks to watch the little village that was down the hill. Ghost was growling next to him.

"Those are women, little crow!" he pointed, watching as the ladies of the settlement carried out a wild celebration. He has never seen such behavior in southern women. "Now this shithole seems less borin'. I'll be happy to go down there to deal with them."

"Tormund, Ghost feels that Serena is there."

"And that's not good?"

"I don't know, but you have to be careful." He looked down at himself and then at Tormund. Both in common clothing, no armor, or anything to defend themselves except for Longclaw, a dagger, and Tormund's ax. Their clothes did not speak that they came from a castle. "We have to find a way to get in there without causing any mess."

"The only way not to get attention there is if we don't have peckers hanging down there. Look at them, they're pure women and children!"

Jon looked back at the people there. Gods, he seriously hoped that the fact that Serena was there meant that she was at least safe.

"We're going to have to wait and figure out how to get in, okay? I'm going to keep Ghost on the perimeter in case of any inconvenience. And remember Tormund, the important thing is to keep Serena safe, no matter what happens," he said, looking into his friend's eyes.

Tormund put on his serious face, understanding and abiding by the indication.

Once Serena was safe they had to flee.

So they waited. 

* * *

When she made sure no one was watching her, she squeezed under the fur they gave her so she could cover herself in the cold night, and took Lyanna Stark's rose-shaped brooch to look at it. It was the only thing she had with her. She should have something from the Targaryens too, like her grandmother's ring but her mother still wore it.

She could not sleep. Not only because she was terrified that Rhena or someone else would come to harm her, but because when she closed her eyes, all she saw was the face of the man who tried to attack her. The feeling that invaded her again was the helplessness of not being able to defend herself from his aggression. She was too fret to shut her eyes and dream that this time he would achieve her goal.

Suddenly, a high-pitched noise sounded that she has not heard before. It is hard for her to realize what it is first, but immediately her mind went to the most obvious answer.

Ghost's howl.

_Papa_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Family moment and time for the past.
> 
> Next, next chapter: A hidden place is revealed and so old feelings.


	15. A Path Strewn With Pitfalls

**XV**.

 **A Path Strewn With Pitfalls**. 

A group of explorers or hunters, Serena couldn't tell, had left in the early morning in search of the animal that sung all night. She was sure it was Ghost, but the absence of a rescue party had made her fear she was just losing her mind.

_Jon_. She truly hoped Jon had found her. She wanted to go home, to her Muña. 

Great Mother took her along with other girls around her age to the pond behind the village to wash dirty clothes that did not even belong to her. The only thing they had let her keep were her boots and she was grateful because otherwise, she couldn't hide her grandmother's brooch.

It wasn't something she hadn't done before; cleaning filthy rags. Because of her mother's own childhood experience with uncle Viserys, and how he would take her to the nearby lagoons to get their ragged stuff clean, Daenerys had invited her to clean her clothes herself. 

"I got calluses in my hands long before Drogon," her mother used to say. 

Perhaps that's why the other girls looked at her when she got a particular piece easily clean of the dirt the first time she tried. Great Mother inspected her work and burst out laughing.

"You are a very strange highborn," she opined, throwing at her another piece. Serena took the material nimbly. "Serae. It sounds like the name of those white-haired crazy people."

She flinched and turned around rapidly back to the pond. Why couldn't she take a more common name? She should have taken the name of that lady that is trying to seduce Jon...How was her name? she wondered. Rosblin? Roselyn?

"Great Mother!" someone shouted out, coming from the village. It was a very young girl. Herself and the others walked over banks to catch on the announcement. "Something happened in the uphill, Great Mother! Martena went to look for the other Warriors and...and..."

She was trembling and mumbling, causing Great Mother to growl impatient, "And what silly girl, spit it!" 

"I think we are under attack!"

The old woman turned around to look at the infants with concern, and for a moment, Serena saw herself dying right there. 

In truth, she took every child to the barn and hid them there. She hesitated before letting Serena enter, might considering her wellbeing less important, but then she pushed her inside too.

Long minutes went by until she heard voices and other sounds coming from not far away. The realization that Jon could be out there and result hurt terrified her and her eyes welled up. 

A baby boy, too young to understand the danger, began to cry and a girl covered his mouth. Serena slapped her hand away.

"You can suffocate him!" she scolded her.

It only made things worse because that girl also started crying. Serena closed her eyes and sighed. Then she started singing, just like her mother did when she was a child throwing tantrums. It was not very loud but surely from outside, they would easily hear her.

The children looked at her intently, open-mouthed, and with expectant teary eyes. It was just a moment before the barn door had opened, and Jon's bloody figure appeared.

Then, they burst into tears again.

* * *

Her voice. It was Dany's voice. He remembered that voice singing moonily in the mornings at the boat. 

"Crow, this fucker is not making it easy!" Tormund claimed behind him while the woman that they couldn't get on the traps started struggling in his grip. "Hurry up and get us the fuck out of here!"

There were four of them. It wouldn't be easy but the voice stirred something inside him he hadn't felt in years. 

Rage. 

He intended to negotiate with them lest avoided any bloodshed. But then, he heard Serena's voice inside that barn and something just broke within him. 

He threw himself into the fight. It was instinctive, primal. It didn't matter for him this was the first time he fought against just women, he was just...blind. 

And they were good, outstanding even. But they had not the same equipment; Valyrian steel against their conventional weapons. 

He killed three in the struggle and mortally wounded one. He made sure she wouldn't get up and then went for the old woman standing between him and his daughter. 

She squinted her eyes at him.

"A Northman. In the South?" She chuckled. "It must be an omen of dark times, for they just come to cause war!"

"I don't want to kill you. Do not make me kill you," he warned. 

"You've come for the girl..." she concluded, "She's cannot of your kind. How..." she was musing aloud. "Oh, no. I've heard the rumors of the Mad Queen returning from the dead. This is her offspring! The Mad Queen and the Northmen have returned south to get us all killed." The thought it seemed to appalled her. "I must kill her. She will only bring us fire and blood!"

That was all. Jon ran towards her and it one single shift of Longclaw, she was gone. 

Between gasping breaths and stupor, Jon gazed at her mutilated body.

"Crow," Tormund called a few times before resorting to his name. "Jon, your neck!"

He hadn't noticed that the old woman cut him in the neck before she fell dead. It was small but it was bleeding a lot. He ignored it and went in search of his daughter.

* * *

Jon hissed when Serena touched the wound of his neck, and restrained himself from cursing in front of her. It was throbbing but he couldn't care as he saw the apparently unscathed vision of his daughter. 

"I heard somewhere that a dog's lick can cure anything. Might we get Ghost to lick you?"

Jon had managed to overcome the vigilance of the warriors with pitfalls he dug with the help of Ghost. He'd attracted them as animals hunted in the forest. A method Serena knew perfectly well. She thought it was clever, although she was a little sorry that a couple of them had died. Martena was alive but rigged and guarded by Tormund.

"What do we do now, Serena?" Jon asked, dispelling the idea of Ghost healing the wound that was starting to get uglier. "I have to get you to your mother. We can't just stay here and wait for _maybe_ the Unsullied to finds us. And it wouldn't be fair to leave Tormund here with..." He looked in the direction where Martena lay tied up with a gag in the mouth. Her sharp blue eyes threw daggers in their direction.

"Martena," she said to him. "I know, father, but they are children. Maybe if we take away her weapons and set her free, before we go..."

Jon looked at her with a conflicted gesture. It was not a good idea.

"I know you care for them, and I promise you we'll send someone to help them as soon as we can. But right now, we have to go back and take this woman with us to secure they won't retaliate."

Serena sighed and nodded. Then she hugged him again, taking care of not touching the wound. She went to embrace Tormund too, who mumbled something about the best days of his entire stay in the _shithole_ before Jon had silenced him with a deathly stare. 

_Home_. She was going home with Muña.

* * *

It felt familiar riding within a procession in the streets of a city as he did once by Dany's side in Winter Town. This time he got their daughter by his side and for the first time in so many years, Jon didn't think in the past with bitterness. 

He glanced upon his daughter and noticed she responded to their unwelcoming stares with an expressionless face just as Dany used to do. But just like her mother, Serena couldn't hide the worrying in her eyes. 

Jon wiped the sweat off his face, blaming King's Landing weather and ignoring the growing discomfort he felt inside.

"Give them time to warm up," he said, looking at Red Keep and speaking loud enough for Serena to hear. She was finally understanding why Daenerys wanted her to cover her window, he guessed.

"I think they've been warmed enough," she replied stoically. Instead of fear of not being accepted or more determined in imposing herself, his daughter seemed indifferent. 

He hadn't had the guts to ask if something else happened to her in the Goldroad. He's terrified of hearing the answer to that question, though he would be there for her if she needed it. Or might he just don't want to take over Dany's place as her mother. After all, she still was Serena's whole world. 

When they reached the main courtyard that led to the long stairs to the Red Keep entrance, Grey Worm was already there waiting. Without Dany.

His heart skipped a beat at the thought that something could have happened to her.

"Serena," Jon told her while helping her to dismount. "You've had an argument the last time. And she suffered greatly for your absence."

The girl with a faraway expression finally came down to earth and looked at her father a little bit annoyed.

"You think I will hurt her?" she claimed, misinterpreting what he was trying to say.

Jon sighed, taking her from her shoulder so both could climb up the stairs. He felt strangely tired of this action.

"Of course not. Both of you hurt the other enough. I'm just saying you need to talk."

She nodded and agreed with him, before jumping her way to embrace Grey Worm. They spoke words in a language Jon didn't understand and then he invited her to enter Red Keep. Apparently there was nothing out of place by his expression, Jon supposed.

As they crossed hallways and archways, Serena turned around frequently to look over at her father. She noted he was unsteady.

They were taken to the Throne Room, or what was left of that place before...everything that happened. He hadn't been there since his first day at King's Landing.

Before the guards of the palace had opened the door, Serena asked him, "What do I say to her?"

"What?" he was a little dizzy. He perceived the words too far. Less and less clear.

"What do I say to my mother?" she asked again.

Jon did his best not to let her know of his malaise, smiling and kissing her forehead.

"Be honest," he just said.

Everything that came next he barely could take in. He heard voices around them and mayhaps the light coming from the broken ceiling or the restored great windows blinding him. The last thing he saw before giving into the darkness was Daenerys and Serena holding each other as the melted throne mocked him from its place.

* * *

Daenerys found herself trembling while waiting for the arrival of her daughter. And strangely, she also was concerned for Jon. She hadn't even realized that he had taken his own initiative in her search, her mind used to suppress his existence from their lives. He'd found her with his direwolf and his wildling friend and faced the group of bandits that had been ravaging the Goldroad for several years now. All this information finally provided by Bran.

The moment she saw her again, dressed in ordinary clothes and with her matted silver hair like when she was a little girl who did not want to get out of the mud, Daenerys burst into tears and ran to hold her and check that she was safe and sound. 

"Muña," Serena sobbed into her neck, in her mother tongue. "Nyke sīr vaoreznuni."

What she should be sorry for? Daenerys had no words at that moment but she made sure to let Serena know she had nothing to ask forgiveness for. 

"I love you," she said, pulling away from their embrace. "More than anything in this world. Do you know that? Nothing comes before you. Please, tell me you are fine, that nothing happened to you."

She stroked her daughter cheek with one hand while she inspected her features for a sign of something wrong. Serena returned a dubious expression that stirred Daenerys' worst fears.

Before she could say something, they heard a thud coming from the entrance, where Jon was standing.

"Papa!" Serena screamed at him as he fell limp to the ground. First Dany did not react, baffled with the world that left her daughter's mouth. Then she hurried up too to attend Jon in the ground. He was asleep or...fainted.

"What's going on with him?" she asked.

"He is sick!" Grand Maestre Gullwuth approached to say. "We have to move Lord Targaryen to the healer's room!"

"Papa..." Serena cried, still clung to her father's inert body. Daenerys couldn't get out of her astonishment at the sight of it. Once she ended to process the moment her eyes fell to Jon and her heart raced.

* * *

"You must be the infamous Mad Queen," the prisoner said as Daenerys walked in the cell rooms. 

"You must be the infamous maiden warrior of the Goldroad," Daenerys replied, the same tone of contempt. "Your deeds spread widely too." 

Fortuitously, Jon had run into a problem that had been plaguing her for the past few months since her arrival at King's Landing: the assaults on the Goldroad, but even more so was the case with these bandits that were impossible to trace.

"What's the honor of the visit of the Queen herself? When I will burn?"

"I am not the Queen. And your people poisoned my husband." 

"The Northman," she spat, "The stories said it was a Northman who killed you. It mustn't be...oh," she pondered before realizing herself about the peculiarities of her marriage with Jon. Then the woman approached the bars of her cell and spoke with disgust. "It was him?"

Dany wasted no time heeding her disdain.

"The last time a witch poisoned a husband of mine, she burned alive and I birthed three dragons out of stone. I know you believed yourself brave now but I still remember her shrieks while burning in the pyre."

The woman was not intimidated and just laughed out loud. 

"I didn't do anything, Mad Queen. You should learn from the little girl --your child I assume. Did she tell you already about our first meeting?"

The mention of Serena stirred something animal inside Dany and she had to use all her willpower to restrain herself from executing her right there. 

"What did you do to my daughter?" Daenerys growled at her.

"I saved your daughter," she returned, "I taught her what her mother is not teaching her with her example: men that hurt woman must die!"

She couldn't understand what she was trying to say but could read in her words that something was wrong with Serena and she would soon find out what.

"Serena was hurt?"

She scoffed. 

"Ask her." She moved to sit back and stare at the blank space, indifferent to Daenerys' menacing eyes. "In regards to your husband, he killed some of my people. Why should I care if he lives or dies?"

It was certain that Daenerys didn't want anything bad to happen to Jon. She never wanted it before, much less now that Serena loved him as a father.

"Because we got your people," Dany answered. "Your children. I am known for burning them, don't I?"

In the same way that the earlier mention of her daughter had her fangs pulled out of Daenerys, the woman stood up with a sudden movement and spoke behind bars with a shrill voice.

"If I tell you what to do with your assassin turned into your husband, weak woman, will you liberate me?"

Her breathing was accelerated. 

"The Lords of the Reach want your head. But I promise you, your children will be safe and I will take all of them under my care."

She could feel the fear through the icy blue in her eyes. She was not a person who was predisposed to die apparently.

"Fine. I'll tell you what to do," she gave in. 

Before that, Daenerys warned in a stern voice, "Be careful with what you say or I'll make sure to burn another pyre with you in it."

* * *

"What did she tell you?"

Grey Worm waited for her outside the cells and was following her closely as Daenerys ran through the halls to reach the healers and Gullwuth.

"I must go and speak with them, urgently."

"Daenerys," he halted her by the arm, his grip almost desperate. "I think it must let it be."

She frowned, unable to understand him at first. When she grasped the meaning of his words, she stepped away, stunned.

"What do you say?"

"He killed you. He killed his daughter in your womb. Because of him, you lost everything--"

"He is there because he went to save our child," she snapped. "Serena loves him!"

He wrinkled his nose in what couldn't be another feeling than frustration.

"It was his false love that destroyed you, us, Missandei, our people..." When she recoiled, he tried to be more soft and pleading. "Please, my queen, be wise. When he had to choose, he did not choose you. Please, show him the same mercy."

* * *

Jon's eyes fluttered open and blurred silhouettes appeared in his vision. He focused on the pair of blue eyes that seemed to guide him back to shore. His head throbbed with the reminiscences of the torrid pain he had felt before, but this time it seemed less intense.

  
"Dany..." was the first thing he said.

  
"Hey," she greeted him with a smile that made him shiver. He didn't know if it was his own dream state or if she was really looking at him that way, with something between concern and caring. "Don't move too much," she indicated.

  
"Father?" another voice called out to him. His eyes moved to his left, where he found a pair of brown eyes like his.

  
"Serena," he replied, "Are you okay?"

  
At that moment, the images of everything that had happened in the last days returned to his mind with the subsequent whirlwind of emotions. Her daughter approached and her tangled silver hair fell to her sides like a crown of light.

  
"Father, are you alright?" She asked in a shaky voice. "We were so worried..."

  
The last thing he remembered was the image of Dany and Serena embracing in the throne room. Behind them, the melted throne, and in his heart a feeling of defeat at the sight of all that he had lost.

  
"What happened?" he finally asked. He couldn't remember anything other than pain, physical and emotional.

  
"Easy, be careful," Dany repeated, her hand on his chest, pulling him down. Her touch felt so warm. "The wound they inflicted on you, remember? It was poisoned."

  
He frowned and swallowed the lump that formed in his throat.

  
"We think it produced a very intense fever, but fortunately the cure was a simple mixture of herbs," Dany explained, with a shy smile. "Now you are cured. We stopped the poison."

  
He snorted, again he had cheated death.

  
"Grand Mastre Gullwuth said you could have died," Serena whimpered, "and it was going to be my fault."

  
Even Dany looked up at her with a stunned expression.

  
Jon reached out to hold his daughter's hand. It was warm like her mother's.

  
"Serena, look at me," he asked her, "there is nothing I would not do for you or your mother. You are my family, now and always. And I would rather die than let any harm befall you."

He stopped, feeling his throat ache as he spoke.

  
"Here," Dany walked over with a glass of water and helped him drink. He also took the opportunity to give her opinion, "It wasn't your fault that Drogon took you."

  
Serena tried to calm her sobs, although it was impossible. "But I wanted to go. That's why he took me."

  
Jon and Dany did not know what to say.

  
"Why did you want to leave, Serena? I thought," Dany hesitated before continuing, "I thought we were here because of your desire to become the next queen. If you've changed your mind..."

  
"No," Serena halted her sentence, shaking her head and trying to get her next words out. "I don't want to leave Westeros. I said that to Drogon and he left me again." She giggled a little. "I don't think he likes it here."

  
"No, he doesn't," agreed Dany, with a sad smile. The memory of Viserion and Rhaegal squeezing her heart.

  
"It's just that, I thought we might have a home here. Why does not feel that way yet? We belong here. King's Landing was built by our family and yet nothing is ours here anymore," she stopped when the tears fell freely down her cheeks. "You two hate doing this and being here. I'm sorry you have to endure it because of me."

  
Jon and Daenerys looked at their daughter with regret and then looked at each other ashamed of their respective behaviors.

  
"Serena ..." Dany tried to say something, but Jon stopped her halfway.

  
"No, let me talk," Jon sat up upwards, Dany and Serena helping him. Once he settled against the various pillows on the bed, he began: "I know we don't have the best story ever. I know what I did and what your mother did are terrible things, if anything, it's that what haunts us every day and what it will going to haunt the rest of our lives.” Jon looked at Dany to confirm if what he was saying was correct. She nodded softly, her expression still constricted, "We have been given a second chance in life. One we don't always feel worthy of. But there is one thing for which we will always be grateful and that is your very existence. You will never be a regret or a burden to us," and Jon's chest exploded at the idea of losing them again, or of never having had them in the first place. "You are our reason."

He sucked in a deep breath.

“When Dany and I were young we made mistakes. We had our chance and we spoiled it. Sometimes the memory of that can be terribly painful, but in no way does it mean that we are not willing to try to remedy part of it. So your mother helps Bran and the Realm. So I want to be in your lives and be the family that I couldn't be for her and for you when I should have been there from the beginning. But there is no way to go back to the past, the only thing we have left is the future. And that future, for both of us, is with you."

The girl could not contain herself anymore at the words of her father. There were many things that seemed to cross her mind, but it was one that she could process and admit.

  
"I killed someone," she said, making her parents jump. "I killed someone who tried to hurt me."

  
A gasp, almost a moan, escaped from Daenerys's throat. She remembered the bandit's words earlier.

  
"Serena," she called out to her daughter, about to lose the little sanity that held her steady. "Serena, what happened on the Goldroad?"

  
"I, no, no..." she began to tremble and soon Jon had to straighten forward to support her. Her reaction was opposite to Daenerys' cool calm. "I told him that we had to wait for the king's peace, sorry, I, I ..."

"Serena," Dany said, this time firmer. "Serena, please tell us what they did to you?"

"They pushed me to the ground. They were two men.”

  
Jon could feel himself dying inside.

  
"Then there was blood. It wasn't mine. Martena and another woman appeared before they could rape me. So I ran but they believed that I was lost and wanted to ask for a ransom. They told me I had to kill the one who they did not kill. I asked them for a bow, I didn't want to do it with the knife. I don't know how to use a knife to kill someone. I am so sorry."

  
Although her recount continued to hurt every part of his being, Jon was relieved to hear that these men had not forced her. One of his hands clenched into a fist just thinking of his little girl in their hands. He needed to vent that anger somewhere.

  
Daenerys had got up and had her back to them. She seemed to be breathing hard. When she turned back to them, her face was still cold and expressionless.

"Serena. There is no king's peace along there. It doesn't always work that way. If the Unsullied had found you, if Grey Worm, me or your father had found you instead of the bandits, their fate would have been no different. They were going to die right then and there."

"But, mother-"

"Serena," Daenerys silenced her, "One of the monarch's attributes is to impart justice. The day you are queen, you will have to do it too. And it is better for the Realm to know that they will have a queen without fear of imparting justice by her own hand. You understand me?"

Jon stared in amazement at the entire exchange, admiring her serenity with the whole thing.

Serena nodded, spasms from her previous breakdown still running through her small body.

“However,” she continued, “No one should have put you through what you went through. Killing is never easy. I wish you never had to go through something like that." Dany took a big breath. She rounded the bed and approached her daughter, placing both hands on the girl's face, making her look into her eyes. "It was justice. You understand me? Not a murder. You are not to blame for anything." She finally brought her eyes to Jon, as an indication.

"Your mother is right, Serena," he agreed.

"Does she?" Serena replied in bewilderment, turning to her father. "And when she executed Lord Varys?"

  
Dany walked back, taken by surprise by that statement. Jon felt it like a blown in the stomach.

"What?" Jon seemed confused.

"Serena where did you get that from?" Dany asked.

"Grey Worm told me about it. He told me that neither Tyrion Lannister nor Jon wanted you to impart your justice and so they betrayed you. That they favored those who hurt you."

Dany let out a sound of outrage.

"Grey Worm didn't have to tell you about that. A lot of things happened back then."

"No, Dany," Jon interrupted her again. This he had to clarify on his own. It was something that even he himself had pondered in the long years that had followed the entire disaster. "Grey Worm is right. Maybe there are things we will never agree on, but I'm sure that as far as I know, he will always be your mother's loyal and true protector. And I can understand why he will never see me with good eyes." He paused, remembering how furious the man was when he found him in the throne room, Dany's blood drying on his hands. “Back then, your mother had warned me that if I speak about who I really was, the secret would take life on its own and we couldn't control the consequences. I revealed it to your aunt Sansa, without thinking she would…betray me. And betray your mother. We came from defeating death itself and I was tired of fighting." He paused, squeezing his closed eyes in contempt of himself. "I felt outside of myself. Lord Varys - I barely knew the man, he approached me warning me that your mother was not well and that she was about to commit an atrocity. And I was weak to realize that we were pushing her to do it. ”

“I shouldn't...” Dany was the one who interrupted him this time, “Lord Varys was right, anyway. He was neither the first nor the last to think it necessary and I am sure there will be more people in the future who will deem the same.”

"But you wouldn't have, would you? We turned our backs on you. You were suffering the deaths of Rhaegal and Missandei, and we only showed you that you would not have different results if you continued to show mercy to those who hurt you."

Dany didn't answer, instead, she avoided Jon's eyes that begged her to confirm that.

"It's because of Drogon, isn't it?" Serena asked in a weak voice. "He is dangerous. And who controls Drogon must also be. ”

It was she who controlled Drogon now, Jon recalled.

"What will happen when they start to think that I also have to die?"

Jon's hand ached from squeezing it.

"No one is going to touch you, Serena," he swore.

  
"You can't be sure of that," she contradicted. “I have seen how they look at me on the streets of King’s Landing. I have seen mutilated and deformed people. Drogon did all of that. My mother did it. And yet they hate _me_."

"Serena," Dany said apprehensively. She didn't want to say anything, and it sounded more like an apology.

"I'm not blaming you, is just that, my grandfather was mad, and they called you his daughter. I think I will not be able to change what they think of me. So if they already hate me. What difference does it make? It is I who have the dragon blood and who ride the only dragon that exists in the Known World. I don't want to live in fear anymore."

Jon began to understand what she was trying to say and a chill ran down his spine realizing it was the same reasoning as Daenerys. I have no love here, only fear. So let it be fear.

Again in this lifetime, he did not know what to say.

"What I did was wrong. It was a moment of anger that cost me what little I had and also your life. If I could change that moment, I would do it a thousand times."

Serena and Jon listened to Daenerys intently.

“I also didn't know you were in my belly. I thought all I had at the time was fear. I wanted to make it clear to everyone who dared to question me that I had absolute power and control. After all I had lost, I needed to feel that everything was in my control. But it wasn't. You know how that ended."

Jon felt his chest tighten.

"And I did nothing to prevent it. I just act on the will of others until it was too late."

"Too late to protect her?" Serena questioned.

Jon and Daenerys looked at each other for a second before she dodged her gaze.

"If I could go back in time," he emphasized, "I wouldn't have done it. I swear."

"Because of me?"

It was a tricky question, he thought.

"No. Because I think I should have given your mother more time or taken things into my hands. After all, everyone told me that she was going to kill me and I am sure that Daenerys has never hurt me or tried to do it, even when she had every reason to do so."

Serena looked at her clasped hands on her lap. Her legs began to ache from sitting on the edge of the bed for so long and her stomach was still empty, having eaten nothing since Jon had fallen ill. She still didn't understand many of the things that were said in that room, and yet it had been enough for her to understand that her parents were imperfect, but deep down, good people.

That would have to be enough for her.

* * *

"You need to drink this tea each couple of hours for at least one week," Dany started speaking of his medicine after Serena left. "Gullwuth is incompetent and I had to ask a Dothraki elder to help me to prepare it. The ingredients are very rare and..."

"Dany," he stopped her. "I'm so sorry, I'm..."

She sighed, "I know it was my fate after what I did. But I'd wish...it hadn't been you playing with what was left of my heart," she admitted. "However, the past is in the past and should've remained that way."

Jon nodded although he didn't totally agree with what she was trying to say. What she was doing since they had seen each other again. Avoiding it.

"I can't fathom my life without her," he said, directly. And because he didn't have anything else to lose at that point, he added: "Without you."

She stopped dead, leaving the things she was doing at the moment half-done. Her face distressed, gaze was fixed on nothing. It was as if she were caught in some deep thought that she would not speak of. After a moment, she laughed. 

"You already lived it," she said. 

"I wasn't living," he rebutted. He could barely remember his life before this, now. 

"Then start doing it," Dany suggested, approaching him and sitting on the edge of the bed again. "You already promised me you will do anything in your power to always protect our daughter. And you have proved to me that you are committed." She smiled and it was sincere. "She is all that matters. Notwithstanding this, you still can have your happiness and I won't oppose it, as long as you protect her." 

"What are you...?"

"If you...If you meet someone with whom you want to share a life, you'll have my blessing, Jon. Just, please, be careful because any wrong move and the one affected would be Serena."

"I don't want to be with anybody else," he rapidly objected.

"It's just a supposition," she calmed him, "You don't know what the heart will want here from ten years on." 

Jon sat upwards, bringing her hand to his. 

"I know right now what my heart wants," he admitted, finally. "I want my family. Dany, I will...even if you don't want me, I will stand by my vows. Even if you don't."

Though she kept their hands joint, Jon felt her farther and farther away. 

"The first time, you also bind yourself to me out of duty. And when the time came and your duty with me collided with your love for your family, I was left without any choice. The moment you told Sansa the truth, Serena's and me, we had our fate sealed," she said, this time struggling with the words.

"That's not true. You were carrying my child, we..."

"Lord Varys was poisoning me," she cut him off. "That was just the beginning of what my life would have been. Your loyalty is not enough, your duty is not enough, it would never be. My hope was that you could love her the way you loved your sisters, your brothers, and Lord Eddard Stark. And I can see that you do now."

"Dany..."

"I'll take care of myself. Life is a path strewn with pitfalls, but I've learned to overcome them. We might have failed to be the queen and the king we would have liked to be, we will make our best to help Serena to might become what we couldn't be. And we will do it _together_." 

He knew this was the right way but it felt so wrong. He loved her, he wanted his family. All he has ever wanted for years was this but not in the way it has been delivered. 

He _loved_ her.

"Ser Davos mentioned to me you've been feeling a little bit off around here, doing little with your own time. And I thought we've been caging you and that's not a soldiers' life, isn't it?" she giggled, taking her hand back. "Tyrion never named a new Lord Commander of the City's Watch. The citizen of King's Landing are a little bit troublesome." She gave him other of those smiles. A gesture that tried to be honest but felt forced. "Could you handle it?"

He wasn't expecting her to offer something like that. He was still thinking about how to approach the subject of their feigned marriage when she launched the proposal almost as an evasive tactic. However, Jon couldn't help falling into her trap. What she was proposing interested him.

"Is this your way to throw me to the citizens of King's Landing and get rid of me?" he joked.

Dany scoffed.

"If I wanted to get rid of you, Jon Snow, I would have done it a long time ago." She got up without giving him time to answer that he was very positive about that.

"Dany," he called to her.

"Hmm?" she turned with an expectant expression.

"It is Targaryen," he corrected her. "And yes. I do want the job."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I removed the flashbacks because they weren't really necessary.
> 
> Next chapter: Elipsis. Dealing with Drogon. Dany and Jon approach. 
> 
> Next, Next chapter: A trip to the North


	16. A Storm in Dragonstone

**XVI**.

**A Storm in Dragonstone.**

Serena gulped nervously and looked away when Martena set her eyes on her. It wasn't just the memory of what happened but the truth that those eyes screamed at her: you are a murderer. 

King Bran --or uncle Bran, as she has called him once or twice-- appeared through the back entrance of the audience chamber with her mother on one side, and another Lord on the other that she couldn't correctly recognize. He was the Master of Law, that she guessed.

"Are you well? Please, let me know if you are not," her father whispered in her ear. She shouldn't be allowed to assist but since she was the one who witnessed some of Martena's and her people's crimes, Serena was bound to testify.

"I'm fine," she lied. However, she was not sickened by the whole matter as she was during the tournament. She was just apprehensive about the outcome of this trial. If Martena revealed what Serena did. What people would come to think of her?

The trial had been postponed until the arrival of the Lord Paramount of the Reach, Lord Willas Tyrell. In the meantime, a couple of things had happened, like Drogon's return, which caused an entire day of revolts in King's Landing, with people demanding the immediate execution of him. Her father, who now commanded the Golden Cloaks, had spent almost a full week in the heart of the city reaching an agreement with them. 

Drogon made his nest in an abandoned tunnel under Red Keep, and for obvious reasons, no one dared to come closer and corroborate what was happening with him except for Grey Worm who though the dragon did not favor, at least respected.

Serena climb down the steep hill without a second thought. Behind her, her mother, Jon, and for some reason, Ghost. Drogon only allowed her and Daenerys the entrance, making a warning growl the moment he sensed Jon's presence. Her mother asked her to command him to return to Essos lest to reassure the citizens of King's Landing. Heart reluctant, Serena obeyed but Drogon ignored her. Through their bond, she could sense that her brother did not want to be alone any longer, and she couldn't even imagine how hard it must feel to be alone in the world as he was, when in a not so far gone past he surfed the skies with Viserion and Rhaegal.

Her mother just sighed, defeated, and asked her to try harder every day. One moon after, he was still down there. 

"Can't you warg on him?" Jon questioned uncle Bran one time during supper. 

" _A dragon is no slave_ ," the King replied. 

It was the sum of all these events that led Serena to have a knot in her stomach. When they called her to the stand to bear witness of Martena's crimes she felt she was the reason why everything was going wrong.

Every time she had to speak in front of the Westerosi, something in her mind made the words escape her mouth too forcefully as if she were speaking in Dothraki. From her place to Bran's left, her mother indicated with a discreet hand gesture to calm down and take a deep breath.

Martena just laughed and did not deny the accusations, admitting with insults and other unprepossessing words that all the lords of the Reach deserved what they had. At any moment, she had mentioned what Serena did.

"We can go now," Jon announced, seeing that there was only one last interjection left before the final verdict.

"No, I want to hear her sentence," she replied, imposing the greatest security she could muster. "And if she is to be executed, then I shall see it too."

There were still doubts in her father's gaze, but Jon nodded.

After a few minutes, the King finally decreed that Martena would serve a life sentence on the Wall. Immediately afterward, hubbub spread in the room. She turned and found Jon just as flabbergasted too.

"Why all the fuss?" she asked in a whisper.

Jon blinked, dumbfounded.

"I have never heard of women condemned to serve in the Wall," he said. Then, he looked at where Martena was, unmoved. "I think she will soon find herself wishing she had been executed."

* * *

"Are you sure it was a good decision?" Daenerys asked Bran, minutes after the woman who coerced her daughter to commit murder had been sentenced. She would have chosen to feed her to Drogon for that. But she could not ignore the fact that she had also saved Serena from being subjected to the worst of cruelties.

"It satisfies all parts, doesn't it?" responded the King of the Seven Kingdoms, who had suggested this path after she approached with the truth of events. Of course, he already knew that.

Both Daenerys and Bran turned and looked at Lord Willas, sitting quietly to her left.

"Lords of The Reach have been very effusive in their demand for justice, but," he gave a tight smile, "I don't see the need to spill blood when the problem is already solved."

As a consequence of all this, the Lord of Highgarden had to be made aware of everything. Dany didn't expect him to be so understanding, and her heart squeezed when he put a hand on her shoulder, and nodded, respectful and amicable.

"Children...they are children," he said, his tone always jovial. "Let them be children."

"Thank you very much, Lord Willas," she said, raising her hand to rest it on his.

* * *

Serena and Jon walked into the crowded hall unhindered. If there was something they had in common, that was their ability to escape court formalities and protocols. Serena because she was just a girl and Jon because he had never gotten used to them.

However, to Serena's great displeasure, they ended up coming across Lady Rosby and it made the young girl wonder if she was following them.

"Princess Serena," she insisted again with that title that made her think she was doing it on purpose to annoy her. Serena clenched her teeth. "My lord," she nodded at Jon. Charming eyes on him.

"My lady," he returned a polite smile.

She started to prate on the things being discussed in the court of King's Landing, and how grateful they were for Jon's designation as Lord Commander of the City Watch. Serena had no idea if what she was saying was true, they seemed like compliments told in a soft and innocent accent that hide second intentions. She read once about this behavior of women during courting, and she didn’t like it. She did not like Lady Rosby.

Serena beamed at the sight of her mother finally approaching, freeing herself from a group of people who had held her behind. By her side, came with a slow pace, Lord Willas. Serena flushed at the sight of him.

Despite her small size, her mother walked with such a presence that owned the room. She was wearing a red wine gown that was a stark contrast with the large, pompous Westerosi designs. Around her torso, a silver chain reminded everyone of how regal she was still. Serena longed for some of that and not her awkward gait.

"Lady Daenerys. Lord Tyrell,” their company greeted. She looked a little taken aback by her Mother's appearance.

"Lady Rosby,” Dany saluted with a perky tone she tended to use with little kids. Serena didn’t understand why she did that. “It is always a pleasure to see you. _And so often_.”

“The pleasure is mine, my lady," the other woman replied, chin lifted. 

"This is already a celebration!" Lord Willas commented, jolly demeanor. "By the way, Lord Targaryen, congratulations! We have heard of your early attainment on the streets of King's Landing. I have no doubt that it will be only the first of many."

Serena turned to see Jon, who smiled sincerely at Lord Willas' compliment. She was glad for her father. Since he had taken over the security of King's Landing, he seemed like a new person. 

"And you little lady," Willas' voice shouted in her direction, making Serena startled, "Please don't give us any more turns! Use the dragon to visit us once in a while. My wife hasn't stopped talking to our little girl about the Targaryen Princess that now inhabits Red Keep. She is fascinated with the idea of meeting you!"

Serena clenched her hands into fists and cursed her mind in every language she knew. She felt very nervous and wanted to giggle. That Lord Willas called her a princess did not bother her.

"No more about the dragon, please," Daenerys interrupted, her tone a little less tense but just as blunt. "I'm sure Serena will visit Highgarden when the time comes. Thank you very much for the invitation, Lord Willas." There was a moment of silence before adding, "Come to think of it, Ser Davos has invited us to spend a few days in Dragonstone. Something of a small-town fishing tradition. The journey is short. Would you not like to travel with us, Lord Willas?" she turned her attention to Lady Rosby, "You may also accompany us Lady Rosby."

Serena and Jon's eyes rounded in surprise, and for a moment, their faces converged in confusion.

Lord Willas let out a huff.

"Of course!" he celebrated. "One never says no to a visit to Dragonstone."

Lady Rosby appreciated the invitation but declined in favor of other events she had already planned. After everyone said their goodbyes, the three Targaryens moved away from the people and fuss, gathering in the hallway, toward the castle's private wing.

Her father turned and put a hand on her shoulder. "You did excellent today."

Before he could leave to resume his daily outing, Serena needed to ask him something, "What's going to happen to Martena on the Wall?"

She wasn't very fond of her, but there was something that still connected her to that warrior woman and she hated the idea that something bad was going to happen with her after having saved her life.

Jon let out a sigh. He seemed to ponder a not so happy thought. 

"I will send word to Tormund to keep a close watch on her. In my opinion, she is a tough woman. You no longer have to worry about that." He pushed her close to him and put one of the many kisses on her forehead that he used to give her on the day. He pulled away and looked at her mother, "Dany," he greeted, before walking to leave.

_Dany...that name_ , Serena thought.

She turned around and faced her mother with something stuck on her chest.

"Why did you do that, mother?" Serena claimed.

"Did what?" Daenerys replied, confused.

"I don't like her," was everything she said and her Muña easily gripped the meaning of it. 

Mother and daughter kept walking forward in the direction of her tower. Dany put an arm around her shoulders and bring her closer. It was too much parental love for one day, Serena decided. 

"There will be plenty of people you won't like, Serena. But you'll have to keep some of them around in order to keep an eye on them."

She nodded and understood her mother better.

“So you noticed?"

"Notice what? Oh..." Daenerys found the answer herself. Then, she chuckled. "I think your father needs the company of someone who is not his child daughter, his child nephew, his feral wolf, or his estranged brother."

"She is trying to seduce him!" she protested, alarmed that her mother would allow such disrespect. 

Daenerys scoffed and halted their pace. 

"What do you know about a woman's seduction? you are just a child!"

"I have eyes!"

"Serena," Dany shook her head and lifted a hand to stroke her cheek. "You know your father lived for several years without the knowledge of us. We had assumed he had made his life anew, remember?" 

The girl averted her mother's gaze, gulping at the memory of that life that seemed far away now.

"Our marriage was a mutual agreement. Nothing less, nothing more. You know that, _right_?" Daenerys kept talking.

“I know you are not together," Serena responded, bluntly. "That doesn’t mean it is right to be with other people. That's betrayal. _Right?"_

Her mother took some steps back and behold the view of her, bristled at her tone as if Serena had said something egregious. She opened her mouth to let out a reprimand but then she just said, “You have your lessons now, _right_? Go on.”

* * *

Jon heard her soft voice accompanied by the carefree tone of someone who could not be other than Lord Ben of whatever place. Of course, they would hardly notice that he was there most of the time, in the City Watch barrack beneath the Tower of the Hand. His new job required him to be engaged on more relevant matters and away from vicious thoughts, but yet Jon was always coming back to them. As a matter of routine, he simply ignored them and carried on with his newly delegated duties.

Jon looked at the map of Red Keep spread out on his desk and another one from King's Landing. A lad had been assigned to keep him abreast of the City Watch's matters. He was speaking in half-incomplete words about how much King's Landing had changed since the dragon incident, as he cautiously called it.

"These need to be updated," he said. "The builders did not need to alter the Red Keep base stone, but the north and center of the city..." he assimilated a whistle, "That has changed quite a bit, _Sir_."

"I'm not a Sir, Thavis," Jon chastened the young boy. How old he has been when that happened? He wondered. Perhaps it was his short age the reason for his lack of ire. "That will suffice for today."

His belief that everything was going well after so many years had been challenged when he was assigned the task of appeasing the riots in the city. Have they always been this nasty or were they the aftermath of an endless post-war period?

Jon's only certainty at the time was that he would rather make good use of his time than be stuck in places he would probably never return to.

* * *

_**Volantis, 305 AC.** _

_She woke up with a start, breathing the icy air that entered her body as if she was swallowing daggers. Everything felt real and painful._ _Beneath her, something rocky hurt her skin, and the first thing she did was jumping to the side and fall to the ground._

_Her first and only thought was: I am dying._

* * *

_She was very cold and the feeling of dying did not go away for several days. She got sick. She didn't know exactly of what, but she couldn't stop vomiting, and everything the servants of the temple gave her, she immediately threw away._

_It was an unease that carried over to her mind, all she wanted to do was burn the world and every person in it. Daenerys looked for Drogon, called him but there was nothing on her mind anymore._

_Just void._

* * *

_"Did you know you are carrying a child in your womb?" the Priestess named Kinvara asked her._

_It should have made her happy, but when her suspicion was confirmed, Dany wanted to rip that monster out of her. The notion of carrying something of him inside her disgusted her. Not only he took everything from her, but Jon Snow also has left in her permanent reminders -- A scar and his child._

* * *

_"I want Moon Tea," she demanded just some days after. Her body still aching. She wanted the pain gone and believed there was only one way._

_"You will not be preventing a pregnancy, my Queen. You will be ending it," Kinvara responded._

_"That or I will rip it off me with a knife," she warned._

_Kinvara bowed and complied._

_"As you wish," she said with too much calm._

_They gave her the tea and she drank from it. Nothing happened, and soon her belly swelled with the sardonic symbol of her doom._

_Many times she wanted to stick a knife right there, but she couldn't. It was always easier to inflict damage through other means than to do it herself._

_So she did what she knew better: war._

* * *

_Daenerys returned to the only place where she thought to still have something to do. In Meereen she found Grey Worm and Daario Naharis._

_She concluded that perhaps she has only been a means to an end. It shouldn't feel so bad, after all, there are people who live to be much less than that._

_As the thing grew inside her, she decides to write a letter and it took almost the entire period of her pregnancy_ _to finally finish it._

_"When the child is born I want you to take it and returning him or her to Jon Snow," she confided to Torgo Nudho. She knew if she entrusted the task to Daario, the babe would never reach its destination._

_Torgo Nudho looked at her horrified. He has not seen her that way not even in King's Landing._

_"Would you give him your child?"_

_"It's not mine," she replied. "I cannot have this. I don't want anything of him."_

_She felt fragile and sad because of it. Because of his babe consuming her from the inside the way he did too. And Dany knew if she was the one going to return the outcome of his seed he would_ _know that he had the power to continue damaging her even after inflicting the worse of damages on her._

_She wanted serenity and numbness._

* * *

Dany jolted awake and her breathing came uneasily; it was the memories resurfacing. She hated waking up to the cornucopia of her new bed making fun of her. She hated being there. 

She strode across the room until she stepped in front of the mirror. There she lifted down the silky strap of her nightgown and looked with apprehension the scar beneath her left breast: it was disgusting. She was disgusting.

Dany covered the horrifying reminder of her failure and went straight to bed, where under the delicate and expensive fabrics, she hoped that the dream could take her away from that immutable reality.

* * *

"Dead," Edd sentenced her after throwing her to the ground, his training sword right above her eye. "You are dead. Undead. And dead again."

"Edd," Jon warned with a grunt. Then he looked with a lifted eyebrow towards her. "I told you to be careful not to hurry the blows, it would lead you to lose balance."

She sighed. 

"I don't understand why you do this. You have a whole dragon!"

"Drogon cannot help me to defend myself always," she responded, still lying on the floor and looking absentmindedly at the ceiling. She supposed it was one of the restored areas. A place where her mother and Drogon had rained fire. Suddenly blue eyes appeared. Hands grabbed her wrist and she was crying. Then the bow in her grip and how powerful it felt until she became a murderer. She took the life of a man. 

"Serena," her father's voice pulled her out of her ramblings. He met his dark eyes like her own, hovering over her. He was concerned. 

"Excuse me. I was thinking in those silly proverbs the Maester made me memorize," she excused herself, accepting his hand in helping to get up. 

"Please, tell me the truth. Are you well?" Jon spoke to her again, quietly so Edd would not meddle. "It's okay to feel that way. It's okay to be...sad."

It was? Then why you abandoned my mother when she was at her worst? Serena shook those ill-willed thoughts from her mind. They would usually come in the voice of Torgo Nudho and not in that of the one who was wronged: her mother. 

"I am fine. I just--I hate when I fail. May the sword is not my thing. Torgo says--"

Midsentence, he stopped her.

"You decide that. Not Grey Worm or anyone else. Besides, you are young and have a lot of time to improve." He still stared at her with those eyes that knew perfectly she was making an excuse. Something she came to appreciate truly of her father is that he didn't push her to point of break. "I have to resume my duties but we see at supper. Yes?"

* * *

She was descending the last flight of the long stairs to the base of Red Keep when she noticed something strange at the end. She was wearing breeches, unusual but necessary to visit Drogon. Serena bent over to inspect the pile of clothes piled just below the stairs, messily hidden. She noted that they seemed familiar. Too small to be a soldier's or an adult man's. Then her attention turned to the half-open door that led to other stairs. A forbidden place for her.

She had already gotten herself into too much trouble, and what she least wanted was to cause people who cared about her well being upset again.

_A glance will suffice_ , she told herself, letting go of the clothes and heading towards the place that for no reason should she explore.

It was a passageway. Long and narrow, from whence she could see the magnitude of Red Keep hovering over her since there was no ceiling. Then she realized that it was a structure exposed and destroyed...by her mother. Surely a side entrance that had been abandoned.

She went on and on until she reached an alley. The smell of rot invaded her senses, but she didn't slow her steps until it was too late to back away.

She had abandoned Red Keep.

Serena tied her hair in a knot and covered it with the hood of her cloak, she had learned its silver color was enough to arouse unwanted reactions of all kinds. She wandered some empty street before arriving at a marketplace. During her lessons with the annoying Maester, she at least came to get familiar with the geography of the city. She knew this zone was mostly safe.

She passed by bakeries, tailors, apothecaries, alehouses, and other places she rather not knowing what they were. Most of these places were crowded by soldiers and those people with long tunics in different tones of orange and brown. Something less than lords but more than peasants, she knew.

There were also dancers on the streets, puppets plays, and singers. It made her wonder why she didn't wander around the city more often. 

She knew she shouldn't continue. That she should turn around and go back the way she came, however, the more she beheld, the more she wanted to keep on.

Serena's growing curiosity was cut off when she heard a familiar voice address her.

"What in the Seven Hells are you doing here?"

A hand grasped her forearm and dragged her to the side. Dressed in homespun clothing, her cousin Eddard had dragged her into an alley with a couple other the children Serena had never seen before.

"Who is this?" A boy asked him. His face was stained as were his clothes. He smelled bad and she could feel it even from the distance that separated them. Eddard's hand on her mouth kept her from giving an answer. "She is highborn!"

He also speaks very bad, Serena thought. He was without a doubt a poor boy.

"She's just the seamstress's daughter," her cousin excused. "She likes to steal some things her parents do and walk around the streets. She shouldn't be here."

"I've never seen her," a girl with the same characteristics cut in. "She looks lost."

"I already told you. She never goes out. She has a lot of work to do at her house or else she will have a lot of problems." Eddard looked into her eyes intently, hoping that Serena would agree to that version of the story. "I'm going to take her back home. See you another time."

Then he loosened the hand that was in her mouth and forced her to walk with him until the group of children was behind, looking at them with suspicion.

"What was that? What are you doing?" she shouted at him when they were already a safe distance away from any dangerous company. Edd did not answer until they were approaching the passageway. 

"You are always ruining things!" he protested.

"I was doing nothing!" 

"How did you know about the passageway?"

"The Unsullied know about it! How did you mock them?"

"I didn't! It was already abandoned when--" his face contorted with confusion. "Wait. Are you saying there's a secret entrance to Red Keep that none cares about?"

Serena also found it odd. The only explanation she could come with is that Torgo Nudho didn't tell Jon about them. 

"We must tell Jon. He is in charge now."

"We can't--" Eddard stopped and took in a deep breath. "Look, I know you are like a princess. I know you and your mother go around the world doing as you please. But I beg you. Let me have this on my own. You already took my home, my family, and Jon. Stop taking things away from me!"

"I did not take anything from you!" she returned with the same ferocity. "It's not my fault that your mother defied mine! And it's not my fault that Jon is my father!"

She wanted to cry out of frustration, but the swallowed it all. There were far more cruel things going inside her mind to weep over her cousin's contempt for her. Eddard noticed that he crossed a line again, so this time he lowered his tone and asked in a softer voice. 

"Please, don't tell your parents. In Winterfell, I could go wherever I wanted, and befriend whoever I wanted. I was free there. I was free in the North."

"So they are your friends?" 

"Yes."

"Are you aware that if something happens to you here your mother and your people will never forgive us? That there will be war!"

"I know the history of our family," he concurred. "That fool Maester never let me forget it."

Almost inadvertently, Serena laughed. For a moment, they remained in silence until the passageway became shorter and closer to the entrance. She remembered then she was supposed to meet Brown Fox on the shores of Blackwater River. 

"I feel bad not telling my father about this," she said, sensing it was not the end of their conversation. Both children made their way back to the stairs and Eddard closed the door behind them, securing it with the latch. 

"Let's make a deal," he turned around to say. "You forget everything about today and if something happens you do as if you knew nothing. I'll take all the blame."

"That's betrayal. I will be betraying the trust of my own father. He will hate me!" And not only Jon. Her mother would be greatly disappointed that she allied with her Stark cousin to hide something this important from her. Still...his words made sense to her. He wanted his home and she was partly the reason he couldn't get back. Most of the things that happened lately have to do with her and her insistence to be here. 

Serena mulled over this subject. It'd be that bad to have a secret? 

"Serena, you know nothing! Uncle Jon understands when people do bad things because of a good reason. He will never hate you or resent you." 

Doing something bad for a good reason. It sounded like something Jon would understand. 

* * *

"I only say, my lord, that those are the words of a man who hasn't leave the limits of this continent in too long!"

Jon observed and heard with apathy the long argument between Lord Ben and Lord Stallworth. Apparently it wasn't the first one since everyone on the table of the Small Council seemed like they've already heard the discussion for the hundredth time in their lives. 

On this occasion, they bickered over economic measures they disagreed on. In that field, Jon was clueless. 

"The North suffered the most when The Great Black Company took over its commercial routes. I'm sorry, my Lord, but I must insist on this subject. Leading a country is a totally different matter!" Lord Stallworth said. 

Jon was on his part merely because of the whole exchange, his word seemed more sensible for him. Of course, if he'd been a better man he would add that Sansa and Harry had a massive hole on their treasure, something Bran was aware of and had commented with him before.

"It's not just her, it's mainly him. But both their heads would roll if I tell someone else," Bran had confided him.

"Someone else than us?" Jon asked, back then.

"My Hand knows it, of course."

He looked over at Dany. She sat on the other extreme of the table, in opposite to Bran. By her sides the two contenders of the quarrel. Ser Davos was next to Lord Stallworth and next to the old sailor was him. At the beginning of the meeting, she was interested in the subject and took the time to back up Lord Ben's arguments in front of Lord Stallworth's. It stung him the amount of confidence she had for this man. It made him wonder how it came to be this way and what were the depths of their relationship. Then in his observations, he had noticed something: she recoiled from his touch. It was a very brief moment but he could see it clearly when Lord Ben attempted to move his hand and wrap it up with hers and she flinched in response before getting up and walking to the archway. 

_"She is not being unfaithful to you, but she is considering it,"_ Bran's word echoed in his mind. Again. 

"Would you please end this chaos?" Dany finally returned to herself. "As much as your suggestion is considerate and caring, sometimes a good intention it's not enough, Lord Stallworth. Lord Ben knows about this business. We must put a little faith in it." Jon saw the man grinning in a way that displeased him --not arrogantly but affectionately towards her. "Yet I must ask you," she continued, speaking this time directly at Ben, "To listen to these people with respect. They live here. This place belongs to them and when they speak, they speak for the sake of Westeros itself."

She moved on to the importance of cleaning the stained reputation of the Crown in front of the lenders. 

"I cannot risk Black Company in its entirety because some petty people," she finished, bitterness in her tone. Jon knew what she was talking about. 

Before the meeting had come to its end, he saw her fidgeting with the ring on her left hand, absentminded as their daughter was just in the morning. He would've given everything to know what she was thinking. 

* * *

Torgo Nudho invited himself into her office and proceeded to keep her abreast of the situation of the main roads. They lessened since news of Dragon's return spread throughout the Realm. 

"Before you go, I must speak to you about a sensitive matter," she told him when he was about to leave. Her commander and friend stood in position as he always did since she knew him back in Astapor. "Serena."

His eyebrows furrowed, concerned. 

"Is she in danger?" 

"No. That's exactly what I am speaking of. She is not in danger." Dany slowly got up from her chair. "I thought I was clear when I forbade any ill word of Jon in front of her."

This was a matter they already dealt with when they lived in Essos. In the beginning, it has been about never mentioned Jon's existence to her. They had agreed about the story of a fallen soldier. Then, Daenerys yielded and told her the truth, something he'd never forgiven her for. 

"She needed to know what kind of man Jon Snow is."

"She is his daughter."

"He killed you. Killed his own child," he repeated, calmly and respectfully, though his words were full of resentment. "And before that, he outcast you. All our losses here were because of him."

Daenerys urged to put an end to this.

"Because of me! Me! I am the one he aggravated! Not you, not Serena...and definitely not Missandei." She stopped dead. It wasn't her intention to go so far. "I am so--"

He didn't let her finish. 

"I stood by your side and I will be there until my last breath, Daenerys. After you and the little dragon, I had nothing else to live for." He walked closer and his words now were sharp and it cut her inside. "But do not ask me to accept this man again. Do not. I will not watch in silently how you let him destroy you again." 

* * *

_**Meereen. 305 AC.** _

_"No," Dany said when the midwife tried to approach the crying bundle. She did not want to see it. The symbol of loss. "Give it to Torgo Nudho. He knows what to do."_

_"Mhysa--it's a healthy girl," she tried to plea._

_"I say take her away from me!" she cried, mimicking the child's and turning on her side to ease herself from the pain of her body. I do not belong to you anymore, she wanted to scream at her as she wanted to scream at her sire. This body does not belong to you anymore. You've used it and wrecked it enough. Leave me alone._

_She heard the sounds of the woman leaving. Taking away the one thing she wanted the most in a different life now gone. Dany closed her eyes and soon she found herself in a land of dreams, where she won't hear anything or feel anything. Just numbness._

_When she woke up, something stirred beside her. She blinked slowly and find dark eyes staring directly into hers._

_You are my queen. Now and always._

_Dany jolted and moved away from the baby that was placed by her side, and soon a sharp pain hit her on her bowels, making her cry in pain. It felt like punishment._

_She looked around and find Torgo Nudho sitting on a chair, at the end of the bed._

_"Yours," he murmured._

_"What does this mean? I told you to take her away!"_

_The babe started crying at the sound of her mother's broken voice. Dany stared down inadvertently and she saw her squirming as if she was in pain too. Her arms made to move instinctively but she couldn't. No. If she did that she won't be able to let her go._

_"Yours," Torgo Nudho's voice repeated._

_"No," Dany shook her head. Tears falling down her cheeks like Viserion and Rhaegal fell from the skies. "Please, don't. I beg you."_

_He moved closer then, sitting on one edge and speaking with his eyes fixed on hers._

_"Yours," he stated. "She has none else. She is yours."_

_Dany eyes shut and for a moment she imagined herself in sweet rest again, no pain, no living, no breathing, no betrayal, no murder. She was atoned for her sins._

_The babe crying didn't allow much time for self-indulgence. Her weeping came uneasily as if she had got tired. When she opened her eyes again, long minutes had passed and her little fist found its way to her mouth. The babe was suckling on it hard and fast._

_Innocent, she thought. You are so innocent of all sin._

_"Mine," Dany's voice quivered when she said. "Mine. You are mine." She hurried to take the baby into her arms and though it still hurt her in the depths of her soul, something more primal prevailed._

_Dany bared herself, uncaring of Torgo Nudho's presence and the babe latched on her breast so perfectly it was like if they were missing pieces of a whole, finding themselves again. She stroke the infant soft and clean skin. She was so tiny that no trait was enough to make her more akin to her or to the one who sired her._

_"You are mine," she said again, not to herself this time but to the whole world_.

* * *

**Dragonstone**. 

Serena leaned against the rail of the vessel to watch the water crash against the hull. In the reflection of the dark water, more like a shadow, was Drogon, who followed their boat and now flew over them like a watchman.

Daenerys was only a few steps behind, checking that the girl was not overly excited and let herself drop. Her hands at her sides opened and clenched into fists as it came back that terrible day she lost Rhaegal returned to her mind.

She beheld the view of the castle and for a moment she delighted on the view of Rhaegal, Viserion and Drogon surfing the skies. It was just a memory. 

Dragonstone had been awarded to Ser Davos for his services to the Realm. As soon as Daenerys and her daughter arrived at Westeros, he rescinded such right. When she wanted to protest, Ser Davos explained that someday there would be a another prince or princess of Dragonstone if everything went well. Daenerys did not know how to respond to that.

When they stepped ashore, reminiscences of a clashing feelings invaded her. _Home_. She thought the first time she was there. _Fear_. It was the last thing she experienced before leaving, never to return.

Serena walked beside her and pulled her into a embrace. Dany smiled and returned the gesture, urging her to walk ahead of them. 

She turned to ask Ser Davos to accompany Serena and guide her through the castle as she would surely be curious and full of questions. However, it was Jon she found looking at her with the same found emotions painted all over his face. She knew him enough to know what words would came up from his mouth so with a shake of her head she stopped him. Daenerys walked the other way, implying that neither of them had the time or the strength to deal with the past, now or ever.

The event that was held on the island was not to her liking so she spent most of the time helping servants rearrange the apartments within the castle. The first time she returned to her former chambers, Daenerys fell to the ground and gazed at the bay with eyes welled with tears. It was the only time she allowed herself that kind of weakness, knowing perfectly well what others thought of her every time they saw her walk the halls where she once walked with the title of queen. A queen who never was.

Fortunately, Serena was too engrossed in discovering the supposed secrets of the castle that she had read in her many books to deal with the discomfort of her mother and father. Ser Davos had made sure that the girl was never distracted, fully aware and even saddened of the irreconcilable gap that Dragonstone marked for them.

One day Dany stood on the long stairs that led to the beach and watched Serena with Jon and the boy Eddard fishing, in silent contemplation. Her daughter laughed and seemed to enjoy the moment, as Jon explained her the ways of fishing, blissful ignorant of the fact that it was an activity that Torgo Nudho had already instructed her in. 

She was happy, Dany concluded. Despite her initial reluctance, Serena had accepted Jon into her heart enough to allow him to be a father to her.

* * *

Serena backed her head as a peal of thunderous laughter left her mouth. Those weren’t the manners Daenerys touted on her daughter but she herself couldn't deny Ben's story about the forty chicken was hilarious. 

It was getting late and Daenerys found the perfect excuse to send her to bed when the girl said, "My father says that everything that comes after the word _but_ is..."

"Enough, Serena," Dany stopped her before she could finish that sentence. She recalled perfect Jon's phrase. "It's time for you children, to go to bed," she point out with a severe look on her face that admitted not opposition. 

Serena opened up her mouth to say something but wisely closed it when Daenerys raised an eyebrow in warning. Her young daughter rolled her eyes, cunningly. 

"My lords," she bowed to Ben, Lord Willas, and Ser Davos before to direct a sharp look to Dany and Jon, "Mother," she said with feigned courtesy, "Father," she said with a smile. It made Daenerys almost roll her eyes.

"She is quite a sort!" Lord Willas celebrated once the children left the room. "You couldn't have raised a more charming girl, Daenerys."

And she had been more than charming that evening. She hadn't missed the fact that Serena had a childish fixation for the Lord of the Reach.

"And you should have seen her at the harvest festivals! She was a delight when she disguised herself as the Mother of the Fertile Lands!" Ben cut in. "You remember last year, Daenerys, when we thought that she would be in the ranks with the other children but she had slipped away among the dancers of the stage?"

Daenerys smiled at the memory Ben had mentioned. It seemed to be a completely different life and at the same time she remembered the fear that had crossed her body every time Serena gave in to her impulse of recklessness.

"I do, I do," she said between a soft giggle. "She is a happy child. That's all she is."

Lord Willas raised his goblet and toasted for "happy childhoods" but the gulp felt bitter in the throat of Daenerys, whose mind couldn't help but return to the voices of children screaming in their mothers arms as she passed over them with her fury. 

* * *

Jon would have liked to enjoy that anecdote the way the others did, but an unpleasant feeling kept him from doing it. A life beside his daughter he lost while he did nothing but count the days until the arrival of death in a desolate Castle Black. Lonely nights drowning in self-loathing while at another end of the world where the sun was brightest, a girl grew up without her father.

It made him resentful. Bitter. He looked at his wife whom he barely recognized and found increasingly difficult to reach, and did not see even a hint of apology in her gaze. By what right did he feel that way? 

When the conversation turned to Lord Ben's many exotic adventures, Jon needed to get away from there so he walked to one of the balconies, where he stayed until very late, when everyone had gone to rest and continue with their lives, a task unattainable for him.

Footsteps approached and he knew it could be none other than Ser Davos.

"If you came to make sure I didn't throw myself into the void--" he teased, turning and stopping dead in his tracks as he encountered Daenerys and only Daenerys. There was not a single guard around them.

"Don't look at me like that. Ever," she warned, her cold eyes locked on his. "I don't owe you anything and if I had to make the decision I made again, I would do it a thousand times again."

His first reaction was shock. After he had processed what she said, Jon took a step forward.

"She is my daughter. Mine. And you denied me of her." He let out a laugh of frustration and disbelief. "You speak of that time in a way that makes me understand that over time you knew that I had no other choice. That what you did was unforgivable. You told our daughter the truth. You told her everything in a way that she knew that both of us did things wrong. And yet you kept her for yourself. You took her away from me with the vile excuse that I might not have loved her."

For the first time in a long time, he wanted to cry. Of anger. Of tiredness. Of Longing for something that could not be anymore.

Daenerys did not budge. She raised her jaw and walked firmly until she was only a few steps in front of him.

"I entrusted one of my children to you once," she told him in a harsh voice that made him back off. She followed him. "Tell me, Jon. In all these years, how many times have you lent even a thought to Rhaegal?"

He could not answer, not because he could not contradict her - which he could not - but because it involved admitting that all he did in those years was to suppress the memory of those years so as not to give in to the desire to throw himself off the top of the wall and join her in death.

Then again he let her be so, with a bitter laugh, she walked away from him assuming that he was just a coward and a waste of time.

* * *

"Don't fall for that charlatan's ploy, he is a pain in the arse," Ser Davos opined the next day when Jon confessed to him about his last meeting with Dany. "Don't let him intrude on your marriage."

Jon let out a bitter laugh, succoring Davos as he lifted a particularly heavy load that had to be removed from that attic before the storm brewing outside began. The years and the abandonment started to affect the structure of the old castle.

"What a marriage. My wife who is my father's sister and the mother of a daughter I hardly know. I murdered both of them and just because we are a group of very damaged people, we have the opportunity to tell the joke. Everything is a joke to the gods, right? "

Ser Davos put a hand on Jon's shoulder.

"I tell you from experience. Once the storm passes, there will be calm. Besides, you cannot ask that everything be a fairy tale. Many years have passed, there is a lot of silence between the two. First step is to assume."

Jon frowned, discouraged. He sat above a chest and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"Daenerys is never going to give me another chance. Letting me be a part of their life is all she is willing to do, so this marriage will continue to be a sham, no matter what Lord Ben does or says." He opened his eyes and looked how Ser Davos grabbed a small chest and drop it accidentally. He sighed and stood hurriedly to help collect its content. "The best I can do is be the father I couldn't be before. Be a best soldier to atone--"

"Jon--"

"... myself for be in part responsible for what happened in King's Landing. It's more than I thought I would be able to attain when I was at The--"

"Jon!"

He didn't notice he was babbling until Ser Davos stopped him. The old man got a long piece of parchment in his hand.

"What?" Jon asked, embarrassed.

"This is a letter," he explained, flabbergasted. "This is a letter to you."

Jon stood still, the things in his hand falling to the ground. He looked around and realized that these things belonged to Daenerys. He himself had seen when they embarked that the Unsullied guards put them on the boat.

Jon tore the piece of paper out of Davos' hands and did not hold back the urgency he had to satisfy. He read the letter not caring that the fact that it was there meant that he wasn't supposed to read it.

**_Jon,_ **

**_I thought a lot about the first lines of this letter but nothing seemed adequate. Nothing remains untold._ **

**_If it were up to me, I would never have resorted to this extreme --The problem that continues to bind us. I tried to solve it by other means and on my own, but fate seems infatuated._ **

**_Rest assured, I am not going to break into your life after this or ever again. What could be will never be and I do not intend to go against it._ **

**_The babe that Torgo Nudho will give you is the child that I bore you. As I write this letter I have not yet given birth and when I do I will not want to know what it is. This child only belongs to you, because I have no more love or affection to offer._ **

**_If you know what is right, if you know what your life would have been if you didn't know the truth of your origins, then don't tell him or her anything about me. Let it exist without that burden._ **

**_For the sake of this child, I wish you good fortune in the wars to come._ **

**_Daenerys._ **

* * *

The thick gray clouds had covered the sky and darkened the ground even though it was still morning. Although it seemed a bleak picture, she rejoiced, after all, she was the stormborn. 

Dany shuddered a little when Drogon flew over the battlements of the castle in the direction to the hill where he used to ramble with his brothers. Terrible anguish invaded her. There was not a day that she did not think of them together. 

"Stay back, please," she ordered the Unsullied, the three of them that followed her who she knew long enough to treat like true friends and owe them explanations each time she resigned their vigilance. "I'll be back in a moment. I need to see Drogon."

It wasn't dangerous to her as it was for other people. Despite their lost connection, Drogon kept recognizing her as his mother. Dany climbed the hill, leaving the intruders behind so she could have a moment with her estranged son. When she was there, Drogon was lying on the field, his eyes fixed on the river, where she knew he was looking for Rhaegal. 

He was so big and his scales so hardened that a projectile could never take him out of the skies like it had with his brothers, yet in his uneasy breathing and bright eyes, Daenerys could see vulnerability. He was suffering. 

Drogon downed his muzzle to be pet, and she obliged. 

"You know if it was up to me, we'd be in Essos, right?" She spoke to him in the language that connected them, receiving a purr in response. "But Serena deserves a chance. She was born to be greater than us and you will there to prove them than you are more than beast, my love."

The dragon shook its great head as if he could understand her. The beast was her, she knew it. Not Drogon because he just obeyed her desire for destruction and pain. For that, she had been punished. She met death in the arms of love and betrayal. Then she lost her bond. However, it still was a chance to live and have her remaining children with her. 

When raindrops fell from the skies, Drogon got up and flapped his wings against the wind. Dany smiled and observed him taking flight. 

As the storm began, she stood there receiving the raindrops with open arms. She took a deep breath and felt free from sorrow for a moment. However, a loud clap of thunder broke into the silence of the storm and lightning flashed as she saw Jon's figure standing near her, face shadowed with a fatal emotion.

* * *

"What are you doing here?" Daenerys asked him above the sound of the storm that surrounded them. "Jon are you well?" she repeated, this time looking behind him, looking for the guards he sent back to the castle under the lie she was there, awaiting them. Her eyes fell on the piece of parchment he still held on one hand. Water was going to ruin it so he passed it over to her before that could happen. 

Dany received the latter and took a glimpse. 

"Where'd you get this? you...you were peering at our stuff?" she asked again, outraged and at the same time, nervous and afraid. It was the more emotional he had seen her after her meltdown when their daughter disappeared.

Jon had no time for explanations. Not for his, at least. 

"Is it true? What it says there," he demanded to know. "Dany. Is it true? You were about to kill our child? To abandon her?"

"It's old!" she snapped, "I don't know how it survived. I thought Grey Worm would destroy it. Are you going to judge me? You?"

Another flash of lightning lit the sky and the storm intensified as if it were a response to the state of fury that blinded his senses. Culmination of years of anguish and pain.

"Our daughter...You were going to make her pay for our sins!" he claimed again, incredibly rapt and unrestrained. "You are a monster!"

Then the inevitable happened. Daenerys stepped forward and stilled his audacity with a slap so loud that it stunned him. The burn from the palm of her hand was enough for him to regain his senses.

"Yes. I am a monster. I am everything you were told I am and even worse. I slaughtered thousands without much care and you were right to kill me because I was just an insane woman." She spoke clearly, much closer to him than she had ever been before. "But do you know what I am not? I am not a coward who stares while others make of my life what they want. I am not a weak person who denies and denies who he is. You will never know what the true one is duty, because you never had to live with the consequences of your actions." She pushed him by the chest with force. "I deserved her more than you will ever do. And she will always be more mine than yours because I had her in my body for months while I had to bear the idea that you were never going to disappear completely from my life." Her face trembled and his heart sank when he realized that it was not only wet with the rain but with her own tears. "My scar disgusts me. And consequently, I disgust myself even more. Every time I look at it, it looks at me again and all I see is the same look you gave me every time I implored you to give me a reason to believe that you loved me." She shook her head, same disappoint in that stare as the one she gave him in this same place when he spurned her love. "You are not going to demean me again. No. This letter does not mean anything because the moment Serena was in my arms I knew that she was mine and only mine. So live with that as your bloody scar will always live with me."

The two in the center of the storm looked at each other. She had made it clear that there was nothing to say but it was a lie. A big lie. Everything they've been living is a lie. 

He thought that after her statement, she was going to leave but she stayed there, challenging him with her eyes to answer her, to push his claim and his anger against her. Not only rage but pure emotion shone in her eyes, both had finally fallen into the same sense of urgency: they both wanted the other to fight.

This time, Jon would not let her leave with the certainty that he was what she claimed. He could have insisted that he hated her for what she did with their daughter but that would mean give her what she expected of him. Daenerys had assumed a truth about him that she was unwilling to let go. And since he had had enough of walking with care that each step did not fall into one of her traps, Jon did the only thing he has sincerely wanted to do for quite some time now.

In a fit of madness, he closed the distance between them and took her by the neck to meet her lips with his in a kiss.


	17. The State of Affairs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After what happened in Dragonstone, Daenerys avoids addressing the matter. Jon comes clean about his feelings. Serena's adventure through the streets of King's Landing takes an unpleasant turn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. The outline for this chapter was much more extensive but I decided to test the grounds a bit in regards to the relationship between our two leadings instead of launching it to the next stage. It is quite an emotional chapter. You will see why. 
> 
> Have a nice day!

**XVII**.

**The State of Affairs.**

**King's Landing**.

"Is, in my view, relatively satisfactory to have obtained from the Bank of Myr this amount of credibility. It's not much about what one has at the moment but what we can have in the future--" 

Or that's what Daenerys heard Ben wield as an argument after explaining the results of his long transaction with one of the Crown's creditors. Like so many other times, she let him explain everything he wanted since his voice seemed to be everything he wanted to hear. For the moment, her mind was doing its best to stay afloat and not give in to the urge to move her eyes to the right side of the table, where her husband's sharp gaze came from.

Husband, she though, the words sounded more uncomfortable than ever. 

_She pushed him by the chest again instinctively, caught in the belief he was about to hurt her. First, he resisted her opposition, and in that short-lived_ _moment, she understood he meant no harm. He was kissing her because he wanted to kiss her._

_And her lips burned as the fire within her._

"...and the more we waste time in trifles and minute details, the more interests will grow. The urgency of this situation is of utmost importance! That reminds me of a journey of mine--"

_He finally caved in to the pressure she was exerting to be liberated. Fear and anger couldn't be simply forgotten, after all. She was scared that someone would walk on them and see the most unlikely scenario. Nonetheless, it didn't relent her hurried heartbeats and the bracing sensation brewing within her._

_He let her go and she stepped back, not without giving him another reprimand for his audacity with a slap on his face._

Daenerys took her hand to her neck, from where he had grabbed her. It was a gesture she repeated more often than ever, unable to stop her body from the reaction. 

Her breathing became laborious. 

_She was trembling and it was not because she was under the storm, probably catching a mortal fever. She was boiling out of rage (she believed)._

_Daenerys tried to find in his eyes a shred of repentance but only found them darkened with desire. How you dare, she wanted to scream at him but the words scrambled in her mind._

_Her heart beat so loud that it annulled all the other senses. Lips burned with his trace on them, and before she could notice it, in mutual understanding,_ _the two of them crossed the distance that separated them and kissed, this time sharing the blame for having yield into the_ _frenzy._

"Daenerys!"

She jumped with a start. This time all eyes were fixed on her. What had happened?

"I'm sorry, I--" she searched for a decent excuse in her mind. "I was trying to follow you, but I got lost. Sorry," she said to Ben. "We can deal with this matter tomorrow. You are dismissed," she released the Small Council. 

When she got up almost for a moment she met Jon's eyes who were still burning her. She fought the urge to yield, she really did it but as much as she no longer could deny she still cared for him, another more rational part told her to move before he could nail his claws on hers again. So she walked away. 

_They didn't stop until both of them needed air in their lungs and when that happened, she suddenly remembered the cold, the snow, and then the fatal blow that led her to lie lifeless and forgotten on the floor. She froze in her place and when he attempted to join their lips again he only found a statue. It was over._

_Daenerys averted his eyes when he searched for hers, with a voice in her mind very clear, very loud._

_You are my queen. Now and always._

_She removed herself from his grip and tried to collect some pieces of dignity before_ _walking away without saying a single word._

* * *

To say that he was contrite was to say little, so Jon once again pushed the thought aside and continued to review the documents in front of him at his desk. There was no case. All he could do was relive that moment over and over again and wonder why he had to be a bloody fool. 

After Dragonstone, Dany did everything in her power to avoid him. From leaving the island in a different ship than him to always being crammed with work so she didn't have to deal with his queries. It was the least he deserved after his insolence. The fact that she wasn't kicking him away from King's Landing was already over-generous. 

It was because she had reciprocated that kiss too, a voice in his head said that he muffled immediately.

Jon didn't know what else to feel. What had been going through his head at the moment he kissed her, he does not remember. He wanted to; he was more than sure of that. He wanted to show her that everything her head had conceived was wrong. But he had chosen the worst way to do it because she recoiled and averted him.

He tossed his head into his hands and ruffled his hair. It was a rash movement driven by his frustrated wish that things could be the way they should be. Her letter...the fact that she had hated him so much that she was about to hurt and abandon their daughter.

Gods, despair was burning inside him.

Jon decided that this self-pity had to stop. He had to abandon those ideas and take what she gave him. Serena was the only thing, not, the most important thing. He couldn't ruin his relationship with Daenerys by chasing a stupid desire.

He threw things off his desk.

* * *

“You, again?”

Serena got up when Eddard entered through the door of the secret passage. Until now, she had been careful enough that no one noticed them there. She had no wish that any punishment would fall on him.

“What if something happens to you!” she claimed exasperated.

“Nothing has happened so far,” he played it down.

Her cousin locked the door and went to the stairs for his clothes.

“Edd, what if Bran tells Jon?”

Her fear to be exposed only increase when she remembered that they lived on the same roof with an ancient creature that could see it everything.

“Uncle Bran would have said something already if he deems it a danger, Serena. Calm down.”

That only made her feel more insecure. Why was Bran hiding such important information?

“We can say that you just found it,” she insisted.

“And then what?” he snapped at her, “I return to be alone in this castle?”

“You are not alone! I am here. And there are other children. I can get my mother to let other children visit us!”

“Other children? Those southron snobs!”

Serena scoffed.

“You are highborn!”

“I am a North man. We are not like the rest.”

She recalled Torgo Nudho's stories about the North and its people.

“Yes,” Serena agreed, “that's because you are all thoughtless, unfriendly people!”

“You are the one who has no friends,” he said, going up the stairs and past her. However, he stopped and turned to look at her with regret. “I didn't mean that, but it's true, you have no friends. Haven't you wonder why?”

I don't need friends, was the answer she thought. Over the years, she had learned to be friends with everyone, and with no one at the same time. She and her mother couldn't afford that because of their nomadic lifestyle. So, while the comment left her pondering, it hadn't necessarily been hurtful to Serena.

“I don't want to have to lie to Jon. I'm sorry, Edd.”

Her cousin sighed, seeing her two steps above her.

“Look, why don't you come and see it yourself?”

“What? I cannot do that!”

“Yes, you can. You already did it!”

“I was...just exploring”

“Will your mother think that? Will Jon think that?”

Her face paled with terror.

“Are you going to blackmailing me?”

“No! Of course, not! I'm just telling ya'...if you are going to be a queen...isn't supposed for you know your people?”

“We yet don't know if I will be a queen,” Serena retorted, squinting at him. However, the thought had already taken root in her mind, leaving her speechless for a few minutes. “But I suppose what you say it's true.”

Eddard smiled, having managed to hook her. The truth was, Serena was both afraid and curious. She recalled the suspicious glances that the people had shot at her the time she returned to the city after having been lost. Maybe she could take a closer look at their lives and help them out. Or help Muña help them.

Yes, she thought. That is what a queen does.

* * *

For a long time, Dany stared out the windows at the city of King's Landing. Compared to the view from the outside, from inside Red Keep, it seemed smaller.

So was the day I burned them all, she thought bitterly as she closed her hands into fists, hurting the skin with her own nails. She repeated this movement a couple of times with Jon's voice in her head: You are a monster, he pointed out correctly. A monster who was about --that tried--to hurt her baby. She swallowed hard at the blow of the memory; this self-punishment was seldom allowed. She needed the fortitude to protect her daughter and her own interests. It was not time to behave like a grieving child.

"Daenerys, I bring you great news," Ben called her, coming into her rooms.

She turned away from the window and turned with a soft smile.

"Please, I need some," she said. 

This time it wasn't about King's Landing. Not even about Westeros. At one of the ports where they kept part of the Great Black fleet, a problem had arisen with the government of that port city. From a distance, both she and Ben could do little to fix it. Notwithstanding this, one of his trusted partners had sent good news: a revolt had occurred and that government was deposed.

Dany didn't really want to know what it was about. Her days of meddling in Essos' political affairs were over. The port and their fleet were safe and that’s all that mattered for her.

"Thanks to the Gods, R'hllor, and its crazed servants!" Ben kept celebrating, showing Daenerys an elegant container of wine that he surely had obtained from Tyrion's collection. "I've brought this to celebrate."

Though she was happy, she made a gesture to stop him from pouring a drink for her.

"I shouldn't."

"You should!" 

"Ben," she reiterated with a stoic tone. "No."

"What'd happened?" he asked in amazement, lowering the container and getting too close for her comfort. She opened the balcony door and went outside. He followed her. "Please, talk to me, Dany."

Daenerys went to lean on the railing. Her hands closed into fists.

"Please do not call me that," she snarled at him.

"I see," Ben said, clearing his throat and coming to stand next to her. "Only your husband has that privilege," he remarked. 

A forceful, cold response used to keep him in line. However, this time it was she who made this conversation an uncomfortable affair.

"The only two people who called me that way, one sold me out and the other..." the other _killed me_ , she wanted to say. But that she has never told him.

"Sorry, Daenerys. I was just trying to bring you some relief," he understood, placing a hand on her shoulder that felt heavy. He sighed and also turned to look at the city. "I should take both of you away with me--"

She chuckled at how ludicrous that sounded.

"--why do you laugh? I'm speaking in true!" he insisted also laughing. "I've been fighting years that head of yours to make you see how much you mean for me," he added in a more earnest voice. Dany turned to look at him. "I've seen your child growing from a bundle in your chest to a little woman!"

She knew he was being well-meaning with his statement, but it felt strenuous for Dany to keep rejecting him.

"I am... not Jon Snow, Daenerys. I will care for you. _I will_."

Daenerys sighed. Here we go again, she thought. 

"I am a married woman," she said.

Ben nodded with a downcast smile. 

"Your husband--" he lamented before sipping all the content of his cup. " _Murderer_ , nephew and husband," he chanted.

At this, Dany turned to him bewildered. 

"You told me he abandoned you..." he continued but she halted him.

"It doesn't matter, we--"

"It matters because what has been done once can be done twice, or thrice," he insisted, seeing in his eyes, sincere perturbation. "History is doomed to repeat itself, and now he is dangerously close to you and you, again, are the one who can lose everything if you make the bad move." Ben fetched her hand and Dany allowed him because she was just too dejected. “Don't let him enter your life and your daughter's life more than is necessary.”

She withdrew her hand at the sudden urgency to defend Jon. The same thing had happened when Torgo Nudho suggested letting him die, and Daenerys realized that urge steamed from the circumstance that bound them together: their daughter. Whether they like it or not, Serena loved her father. And Daenerys would never meddle in that sacred bond unless it was to protect her daughter.

"Jon is Serena's father," she said firmly, "And he's also my husband. I'm going to ask you to respect that if you want to continue to have a good working relationship with me."

Daenerys walked back to her chambers.

* * *

Wanting to escape the confinement of his office (and his mind) Jon went to the Keep library to find the castle maps. Bran had warned him of entrances and passages that needed to be closed. Now that the administration of the new Hand (his wife) had increased the treasure of the crown, they could afford to begin repairing the damage done...that day.

Everything led him to think of Daenerys.

"My Lord?" a soft voice called out to him.

Jon turned to find Lady Rosby, whose forename he no longer remembered.

"My Lady," he greeted. 

These casual encounters with the sweet young woman were beginning to become more frequent. He was not surprised, after all, he has grown up in Winterfell where there were always people visiting and staying long periods of time. In fact, on many of those occasions, his father's wife kept him forbidden from all the main halls.

"Are you looking for something?"

"Actually, yes. Maps," Jon said, looking at the vast number of tomes arranged on shelves. "I'll probably have to turn to the Maester." 

Lady Rosby walked past him to the shelves where he had been searching for those maps on his own. Jon heard a soft, low murmur.

"City maps?" she asked.

"No, from Red Keep."

Without taking her eyes off the tomes, she continued to walk down the hall after hall until Jon heard her celebrate.

"I have visited this library more times than the Maester. We used to play here with Myrcella and Tommen," she said, approaching him with the maps he was looking for. "You will imagine, my lord, how long that is."

The memory of the Lannister children was disconcerting to say the least. Jon never knew very well what became of them but he knew that they had died as Cersei usurped the Iron Throne. The thought knocked him out of it for a moment.

"Are you alright, my Lord?" he heard Lady Rosby's voice and it brought him back to the present. Jon blinked and peered at her, becoming very aware of how young she was. Suddenly everything felt inadequate.

_"If you...If you meet someone with whom you want to share a life, you'll have my blessing, Jon. Just, please, be careful because any wrong move and the one affected would be Serena."_

Dany's words echoed in his mind and he realized that she was referring to this exactly. At this little slip that could become a big fall. 

Jon thanked the young woman for her help and left from there to return to the solitude and tranquility of his office.

* * *

"Wait," Edd stalled her as they approached the end of the passageway before exiting the alley. Serena watched as he took a pile of dirt and rubbed it over the fabric of her tunic and then her face.

"What are you doing?" She exclaimed stunned, trying to get the dirt off her.

"You were too clean!" he excused. They were both wearing ordinary clothes, although she has had to put on a hood to cover her silver strands. Gods knew that they had brought enough trouble already.

She convinced herself that she was doing this to learn more about the people she was going to rule one day. Foreboding overwhelmed her for doing something so wrong and against her mother and father's wishes. However, she was exhausted that after almost a year, she was locked up as a prisoner.

Serena grumbled in her mind, seeing herself so confused.

"Remember you are the daughter of seamstresses. You can speak well but not so much," Eddard reminded her as they went further. 

* * *

"How did you get in here?" 

Daenerys nearly slipped from her shock when she saw Jon sitting on the divan at the end of her bed. It was no longer fear, but surprise. Although some apprehension filled her chest at the idea of any of the Unsullied or another of her people seeing him in there.

  
Jon got up from the seat and looked at her uncertainly. She realized that he did not come armed and that his hands opened and closed at his sides. He was anxious. 

"Sorry, I couldn't find another way to talk with you."

Dany stood still, watching him. Yes, she has been avoiding him. What else could she do after what happened between them? 

"Very well," she agreed, circling around him to reach the elegant chair in the other point of the room and offer him its twin with a hand gesture. "Take a seat and speak," she invited him.

Jon nodded and moved to take the place she was granting him, always respectful of the distance imposed. 

"If my guards know you are here..." she begins but Jon cut her off.

"I know, Dany."

She leaned back and stretched both arms in the armrests, her legs crossed. Dany knew he wouldn't hurt her unless she gave him a reason to do it. And it was _that_ possibility --certainty-- that refrained her from relaxing. 

The irrational part of her mind, however, buzzed with expectation because of the ineffableness of the matter. Her skin burned where he had touched her and the cold of the rain was assimilating in her body in the form of small drops of sweat cooling the back of her neck. She felt like an idiot for letting him affect her like that, as if she were again a naive young woman who let this same man ruin her to death. And even after she died, his seed grew within her to bind them together for good, making this reunion inevitable. Should she feel anger? or did she have to stop and act in a mature way by finishing things off like he never dared to, in order to maintain the temperance with which she has carried herself all these years? 

She was overthinking it.

"Well," she snapped, startling him. "Speak!" 

"We kissed," he said.

He looked into her eyes and she did not avert. Both of them had a straight, unreadable face.

"We kissed," she agreed and recognized. 

"And you stopped talking to me," Jon continued, finding in his own words the logical outcome of the situation. "I deserve it. I'm sorry."

She didn't know if he meant the slap or her ensuing dissociation, in any case, Daenerys didn't want him to believe she would not recognize her part in all of this. The part she willingly played after his first kiss.

"I'm not a maiden you had lured. I am the mother of your child, legally your wife and your former lover," she explained. "It won't happen again."

"It won't?"

She shuddered a little and tilted her head, taken aback. She waited for him to reformulate his question but he'd only kept staring at her with those dark and captivated eyes. 

"It is not right," she said. 

"Aye. Because a husband and a wife do not kiss each other."

"You know what I mean."

"No, I do not," he snapped in exasperation, "Let's speak honestly for the first time in our extremely complicated lives!"

"I do not understand you," Dany risked to give a more blatant response, "You did not want me. Not in that way. You said it yourself --I am a Monster!"

He closed his eyes regretfully.

"I shouldn't have said that. I was mad about the content of that latter and I let it blind me. I am a fool. You are a good mother to our daughter. You've always been." He sighed. "I made a mistake in judging you when you had all the right to feel the way you felt. I saw the letter and I only could think in this beautiful child almost being hurt --I should have blamed myself!" Dany jolted out when he shouted those words. "It's not true I didn't want you in the past--"

"You killed me."

"--because you were dangerous. Because I was afraid of what you were willing to do--"

"You killed me," she repeated. 

"--what would you have done in my place, Daenerys?" he asked, desperately. 

"You killed me!" Dany snapped, cutting him off, "You kissed me, and then you killed me! _Anything_ that comes after it, it's just this whimsical destiny refusing to let us go so we can be free from each other's." She spoke so sharply that the words seemed to cut him off inside. "I wouldn't have killed you, not in thousands of years and that's because what we had was wrong. It shouldn't have been that way." She shook her head exaggeratedly. "I am a monster. Not because you said it but because of what I have done. Nothing will change that. _And you killed me_."

Her voice quivered with each word and when she finished, she realized her chest felt heavy with anguish for all the things she kept in silent contemplation for years. Herself providing the answers in her mind because she accepted they would likely never seen again.

The problem was that his presence challenged this agreement with herself, facing her with the not so far-fetched possibility that she still cared enough for him to ached at the notion that he, to some extent, loved her.

* * *

Jon dared not look at her in the eyes anymore and instead, he closed them and took a deep breath. He felt the hot, itching sensation of embarrassment urging him to leave the room and never return to confront her again. He had no right to do so. It was already too benevolent of her to allow him a chance to redeem himself as a man, granting him the opportunity to be the father of this child she raised on her own, and a better soldier and commander. How could he expect more? How could he dare to? 

Her words were full of resentment, in all the right way she was entitled to feel. And she only exposed her feelings because he pushed her to grounds they should never have stood upon again.

He made to get up and leave, risking to stare at her one last time. What he saw were her eyes falling and her lips trembling that way he knew that attested dissatisfaction. 

He frowned and sit back on the chair.

"I know my word means nothing to you," he began to say, quiet and patiently, "I know you will never trust me back with yourself again. I have no right to ask you for this." A pause and he clasped his hands together nervously. "I accept and understand your reasons but you cannot expect me to go along with the way you deal with things. I cannot live in this lie, seeing as if I had what I wished for this past decade but knowing that it is not real. That I have to remind myself each day of this. It's a feeling with which I lived all my life and I am tired, Daenerys."

This time although he sought her gaze, she avoided him and stared out the window.

"I loved you," he finally said, "My feelings for you were sincere then and the more I am near you, the more I know those feelings could not be erased or being pushed back." He swallowed the lump in his throat. "The same way you cannot hide your good heart, even after everything that happened."

He got up from his seat and stood waiting for her to turn to see him but she didn't. He accepted, defeated.

Seeing that he no longer had anything to lose, since he had already lost everything, he added,

"I kissed you because I wanted it. I married you because I wanted to be your husband and the father of our child. I am here because I wanted to be by your side. I still love you and I cannot do or want to do anything to fight this feeling."

She did not reply and only stared at him with a shattered expression. 

As he saw a lonely tear fall down her cheek, he fought the urge to cradle her face because he knew it was off limits. But Jon wanted to touch her somehow so he made an attempt and she flinched a little, making him stop with a hand midair and stepped back.

"I should leave," he said, clearing his throat and looking down to the floor.

Jon didn't wait for her to agree or disagree. He turned around and walk away to the door of her chamber. 

" _Do not_."

Her voice came rushed as the sound of thunder, and whose echo startled him.

Jon had his hand on the doorknob, he had sauntered toward the entrance in a quickly gail, sure he had to leave. He was still frozen in front of the door when he finally realized it was real. That she was saying those words to him.

He turned slowly and found her on the threshold that led to her bedchamber. She seemed small in comparison.

"What?" he asked her, walking some steps forward. 

Dany abandoned her stillness, traversing the distance between them until she was only an arm's length from him. Her arms dangled from either side but she was standing upright and her eyes were focused on his. With this closeness, he could see that there was affection in those eyes of her, making his heart skip a beat.

"Stay," she repeated with a thin voice. Not exactly the assurance he was looking for or that he needed, but enough not to want to let it go.

The two of them took a hesitant step forward like children about to cross the boundaries. Her gaze was fraught with vacillation, and he had no doubt that the remnants of his damage were roaring in her mind. Their breaths were the only thing heard in that room.

Do not hurt me, he could tell she was yelling silently, when he cradled her face and looked at her beautiful countenance full of fear. 

Neither of their previous kisses had come as slow and tender as this, plagued with an innocence that neither of them could claim to hold. He lowered his lips to hers at the same time that he could feel her grip on his lower back become more secure and firm, pulling him closer to her. He allowed himself to be there without making any sudden move that could scare her away, waiting for her to give in to him and tell him with her movements what she expected of him.

His lips closed on hers, and he felt her take a deep breath through her nose as their bodies swayed slightly. Finally, she opened her mouth and he could no longer resist the urge to deepen the kiss. This time, she made no attempt to wriggle out. One of her hands rose to grab his face and together they forgot for a long moment about the world around them, surrendering their hearts. 

* * *

Serena laughed when Eddard was pushed without hesitation by the boy named Lucan toward the hay mountain. It was a sudden move but they were both engaged in the same game. She and the other children sat on the dirt floor. They were in a kind of shed of someone who was devoted to the building of beds.

"Why don't your parents let you out?"

Duncan asked. He was a boy of just eight. His question helped her relax, realizing that she was in an unnecessarily rigid posture.

"I..." Serena searched her mind for an answer, "They say it's dangerous for a child to walk alone on the streets."

Taiena, the only other girl with them, let out a snort. Serena knew that she was a girl older than her.

"With the dragon queen up there and her savages down here--" she started to say. Serena felt the hair on her body bristle with anger.

"They are not savages!" she protested vehemently.

The children looked at her strangely. Eddard from his place in the hay watched her with wide eyes.

"I mean--"

"You know, you're not even old enough to remember it," protested a boy.

He was referring to their mother's attack on Drogon. The sack of the city. Serena ducked her head and nodded.

"I just wanted to say that they haven't done anything to me."

"And you think that because they haven't done anything to you yet, they stopped being savages?" the boy insisted. Tavis she believed was his name, and he was older than all of them, lanky but with a childish face.

Tavis rose from his place to remove his tunic to show a wound on his abdomen and back. A deep cut.

"Those savages cut my mother off!" he snapped, as she felt a lump form in her throat. From the appearance of her scar, Serena deduced that she was referring to the Dothraki and not the Unsullied, but explaining that meant also explaining how she knew it too.

"I'm so sorry," Serena said, avoiding the look.

"I think your parents are going to be looking for you," Eddard said, coming to stand where she was and reaching out a hand. "We better go."

To return to the secret of passageway, they chose a longer and more tedious path that would serve to divert the curiosity of Eddard's friends. It was a long journey that forced her to think.

"There is more?"

"More of what?"

"More children...hurt."

"Tavis is not a child."

But it was when my mother hurt him, she thought, eyes swelling with tears. She tried to hide it but could see Eddard out of the corner of his eye looking sideways at her.

Although she had a good time there, Serena couldn't help but carry a heavy heart until she returned to the castle. Now she understood why all those people looked at her ugly and full of resentment. She was not loved here and never would be.

By the time they had reached the stairs inside the Red Keep, she was trembling.

"Serena, are you alright?"

No, she answered in her mind, falling to the ground as everything went dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some things will still happen in the future so this is not their full reconciliation. That is why I closed this chapter with a tense note again.


	18. Amidst The Strife

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Memories.

**XVIII.**

**Amidst the Strife**.

_**Pentos, 310 AC** _

_"Not so far Serena," Muña chastised her when Serena trotted past the distance tolerated. Serena turned and smiled apologetically before grabbing Brown Fox's hand again. Daenerys shook her head and snickered._

_Mother and daughter were clad in their special outfits for the street, headscarves hiding their silver manes. They wore this each time they had to come and pay a visit to old acquaintances, which was a word Serena recently has learned meant almost friends. She didn’t know who these people were, nor did she have permission to go along with her mother to these meetings. She would stay behind with Brown Fox and wander the marketplace, buy candied fruits, or see the various goods that were displayed in the long rows of stalls and stands._

_Beguiled by the strangeness around her, Serena hadn't realized that her veil had fallen to the ground. By the time Brown Fox noticed, her platinum-curled bun attached with a dragon pin had toppled down her shoulders and was left exposed to the view of passersby. She retraced her steps to pick up the scarf and the pin, but when she wanted to reach over, another hand seized. And it was not Brown Fox’s._

_The girl’s eyes widened when they met the face of a man. His face was unlike most people Serena knew, and he reminded her to some extent of Daario, a friend of her mother's whom she had met only a handful of times._

_"Is this yours, young lady?" he asked her. First, she didn’t realize he was speaking with the words she rarely heard her mother speaking every once in a while, and one she knew only a smattering of._

_His hair was of the color of the honey her Muña poured over the fruits in the mornings. He was wearing clothes that she had seen other men wear that looked heavy and noisy._

_Armor, she remembered the name of these clothes. He was wearing armor._

_Before she could utter an answer, Brown Fox cut her off and pushed her behind him. After exchanging a few words with the stranger, Brown Fox rescued her veil and loosely pulled it back over her hair. Serena wanted to scold him and tell him that he was doing it wrong but he picked her up and together they went back to where the others were._

_As they left, Serena rested her chin on his shoulder and kept staring at the stranger. He waved her off with a hand gesture she returned._

_She realized too late that this stranger took her dragon pin with him_.

* * *

_**White Harbor, 311 AC**_

_Jon cursed as one of the barrels coming down the bridge slid off the dock into the water. The lads he brought from the wall only laughed as he walked past them to see what it could be done to save it content._

_“These arseholes would serve better in the Ice Cells,” Tormund complained aloud. Jon agreed but said nothing further. He was in charge to make them the slightest functional for the realm now the Night’s Watch turned into a mere patrol force for the North. Gone are the days where they hunted wildlings and kept vigil so that nothing from the other side would cross into the realm of men. Now their tasks consisted of transporting food and goods through the roads of the kingdom and bringing them safely to their respective destinations. “Throw your fucking arses down there and get it back!” Tormund shouted an order the lads immediately abide by._

_Jon sucked in a deep breath and watched around them. People gathered around to see what was going on. He hated it. Sometimes people would still recognize him despite his best efforts to hide from the person he was…the character they made of him._

_A strong flash hit his eye and made him jerk back. Jon looked toward it and saw something gleaming in the armored chest of a soldier. Something that made him walk forward until he saw clearly the object was a pin that held his cape. A pin he saw several times over, a long time ago._

_A dragon pin._

_“Jon!” Tormund called out for him from his back, noticing him flounce away. “Jon!” he tried again._

_Jon swallowed hard. It never occurred to him he would see something like that again and the memories that crept into his mind had him shaken and gasping for air._

_You can’t tell anyone about who you really are._

_You are my queen. Nothing will change that._

_Is that all am I for you?_

_Dany, please._

_Be with me. Build the new world with me._

_You are my queen. Now and always._

_His feet moved toward the man who was walking down the dock, nonchalantly. As soon as he noticed Jon's eerie presence, he pulled away from a little and looked him up and down._

_“Am I good for something, my lord?” he asked him._

_“Where you get that?” His voice barely a whisper._

_“Pardon me?” The soldier looked down at his chest. By his accent, Jon deduced he was a southern one. “Oh, this? Just a gaud from the Free Cities. They…still revel on the memory of the Mad Queen.”_

_In a blink on an eye, his fists caught him by the delicate fabric of his cloak. He must have been some sort of Knight from an important southern family. Jon didn't care._

_“Where you get that from?” Jon requested with a crouched voice._

_“Jon!” Tormund came to intervene. Easily, his wildling friend came and snatch him off the stranger._

_“Fucking mad man!” the man shouted back. He started walking to leave as Tormund led him back to where they were working._

_“What the fuck is wrong with you, little crow?”_

_Jon had no words to explain what had just happened, as his eyes focused on the shape of the disappearing soldier with the dragon pin on his chest. It was a mere ornament from Essos, where he knew people would still hold dearly Dany’s memory unlike here._

_It burned him. To remember burned him alive._

* * *

_**Myr, 312 AC** _

_"Mama, who is my father?"_

_Her grip on her daughter's hair loosened, dislodging the braid she was putting together on the crown of her head. Dany sucked in a deep breath._

_She shouldn't be so by surprise, after all, she always kept in mind that it would come sooner or later the question about him. It happened on a quiet afternoon in the backyard of her rented mason in Myr, where she had her annual meeting with Ben and the other members of the Black Company. Unintentionally, she was raising her daughter on the run as she had grown up alongside Viserys. Answers were the least Serena could demand._

_"He was a warrior," she simply answered._

_Serena turned around in the stool and Daenerys_ _looked to avoid her dark-eyed gaze. Sometimes she forgot how much her face reminded her of that past --or she pretended to._

_"Like Torgo Nudho?" Her daughter asked back._

_Her eyes fell down at her sandaled feet and she just nodded. She hoped it could be enough for her. It wasn’t of course, because the next thing Serena asked was;_

_"And where he is? Did he die?"_

_Daenerys’ face whipped up and she battled against her good judgment. There was no day she didn’t think about the man that sired her daughter. She believed that if he were any other person, the memory would have faded long ago or become remote as happened with many other people who she had to leave behind in order to move past the pain and make a better life for Serena, her people, and for herself. A part of her, the weak part of her spirit, trembled in the shelter of her loneliness as she remembered what this man had done to her. The other was scared because it had actually happened._

_She looked at her daughter and recognized him in her features._

_"No," she said the truth. She swore herself she would never tell a lie that could force her to live in a false belief as it happened to them. But she ought to be careful, after all, Serena was only seven. "I mean, I don't know because I--I haven't heard from him for many years. He was alive the last time I saw him."_

_"Did--Did he leave you?" she stuttered. Careful and childish._

_Dany's chest ached where the scar rested. "He did." She nodded and gave her a sad smile. When she looked down at her hands nervously fidgeting with the fruits on a plate, Dany felt the urge to clarify, "Without knowing I was expecting you."_

_She didn't want Serena to believe that Jon had abandoned her too._

_Serena beamed at her mother with renewed hope._

_"So...it is possible that we can go and meet him?"_

_Never._

_"No," Dany stated. Not at least whilst she was alive and could prevent either of them from putting their poisonous and treacherous claws on her daughter._

_"Why?" Serena squinted at her mother._

_He could be dead, for all Daenerys knew. Torgo Nudho said he was exiled for committing treason. She liked to think he moved on and was alive and happy wherever he was for she could live with that thought rather than the certainty he was dead._

_"Because if he is alive, he is living in Westeros--"_

_"Why can't we go back to our home?"_

_Because of her lessons in several disciplines, she held a good amount of information and could easily make the right assumption: Westeros was a forbidden place._

_"Westeros is not our home," Daenerys reminded her._

_"Is the home of the Targaryen!" Serena recalled and brought forth what she learned._

_It was not anymore, and Daenerys had to die to understand it._

_"Serena," Dany pleaded, closing her eyes. "Your questions are hurting me."_

_A moment of silence followed it. It was cruel of Daenerys' part to resort to the incredible maturity of her little daughter to stop her from arriving early at the truth that she would one day confess to her._

_Serena had grown up too soon, Dany regretted._

_"I'm sorry, Mama," she said after a time. Daenerys felt ashamed of herself._

_She clinked her tongue. "I think...I think he would've loved you," she admitted. When she uttered it, Serena's face sparkled with a smile._

_"Do I look like him?"_

_Dany lifted her hand to cup Serena’s chin and smiled at her daughter. No matter what happened, she thought, as long as I have you, I’ll do it all again._

_"You got his eyes." She put a strand of curly, silver hair behind her ear. "His curls," she pointed out while slightly pushing with her fingertip her forehead. "His stubbornness."_

_Serena's smile only grew wider._

_"And did you love him?"_

_Daenerys wanted to scoff at that but refrain from doing so._

_"Of course, I did," she said in a whisper._

_"Did he love you?"_

_Again, the pain that made her eyes shut tight. No, he didn’t, she thought to herself. But that was not something her child daughter needed to know._

_"I think he did," Daenerys responded resigned. She attempted to leave the matter behind and again return to braid her hair but when she approached, Serena stopped her, looking straight into her eyes with a last question;_

_"Could you tell me his name?"_

_Dany gulped hard and her mouth twitched with uneasiness._

_"Jon,” she revealed._

* * *

_**Castle Black, 313 AC** _

_"She is every single day more beautiful," Jon said of his niece as she ran around the Castle Black yard with Samwell and Gilly's daughter._

_"She's taken the looks of her namesake, don't you think?" Sansa answered, looking as mesmerized by her daughter as he did. Being a mother was the only thing that returned to her some of the warmth in her blood that she had lost through years of survival. “And I can see Arya in her too, especially when she refuses to pay attention to our Septa’s lessons.”_

_The laughter of children spluttered as little Sam and Edd joined the party. They looked at them from the railing of the balcony._

_“Edd, careful with your clothe--” she warned her firstborn but he was already throwing himself to the muddy ground. “Bloody child!” she cursed her son, making Jon shook his head and hid a smile._

_The two walked down the gallery to the yard, where Sansa finished scolding her son. The lad was so used to his mother's reprimands that he only gestured and walked past her to playfully shove Jon away. He was followed by Little Sam and him by Lyanna, who stopped in front of Jon to bow in the ladylike fashion her mother surely nurtured._

_Later, when they were sharing dinner, Jon couldn't take his eyes off his nephew and niece as a thought ran through his mind. There was a time when he never even wanted to see his family again. A time when the bitterness was too much to even contemplate that life could ever have moments like these again, moments of apparent joy and easiness._

_Just as winter gave way to spring, the dead gave way to new life reflected in the children who thrived in the free folk, Sansa's children did their good part to remedy the relationship that had been cut short by her betrayal. Forgiveness was hard to come by but sometimes Jon could believe it was a possibility._

_"Thank you for allowing me to call her after my mother," he told her. When Eddard was born, Jon was invited to come home but he refused and sent his best wishes to his parents. Sometime later, Sansa arrived at Castle Black inadvertently with the boy who had barely reached his first name day and a bundle containing her unnamed niece. An act that spoke of his sister's desperation to correct her mistake. Or so he wanted to believe._

_"It was an honor," Sansa replied, "Although I always thought you would reserve it for your own daughter."_

_Jon looked at her intently and traced the second meaning of her words. She was implying something he's been very adamant in letting clear in the past._

_"I shall take no wife and father no children," he chanted as he did twice as a vow and several others as a reminder to the world and to himself._

_She scoffed and frowned._

_"You are not upheld to those vows, anymore," she made sure to whisper. Then she attempted to move her hand above his but Jon pulled away. Yet, she insisted;_ _"Jon. We want you happy."_

_We, she said. But who were we? Were the people who had done little to help him before and a lot to leave him where he was? The people he saved._

_"Jon, you are not happy here. Everyone can tell--"_

_"Did you think about my happiness when you broke your oath?" he blurted out._

_Her blue eyes looked at him with dismay and she gulped._

_"I wanted you safe," she whispered. It almost sounded sincere. But it wasn't, he told himself. Suddenly, all thoughts of forgiveness faded from his mind. Even listening to his nephew and niece's conversation in the distance did not take effect on Jon._

_"You wanted her gone," he reminded her. And Jon carried out her will._

_"Jon..." it was the sound of her soft plea but he did not listen to it._

_He got up from the table and left the room under the apprehensive gaze of those present. Once he breathed in the sharp, chilly night air, he decided he couldn't stay there any longer and the urgency led him to climb the long stairs to the top of the Wall as if it were a mere walk._

_Once up there, he leaned over the edge to look out into the dark void and beyond to the forest where he wished he could lose himself forever._

* * *

**Braavos, 314 AC**

_With a fleeting move of his torso, Torgo Nudho released Serena's grip on her neck and pushed her to the ground. He did it in a not so brusque way but to remind her not to rush her attacks. He's been insisting that Daenerys let him train her more often. So far it had all been a game but it was time for her to really start learning discipline. Just a few weeks ago he and his soldiers intercepted an entourage of hired assassins who were looking for the trail of Daenerys Targaryen and her scion. The danger was always lurking and although as long as he could protect them with his life, he would, Torgo Nudho dreaded the day he couldn't be there to do so._

_The dragon cub wiped the dirt off her rear as she got up and shoved him back in retaliation. Although her walloping was superficial, he pretended to be pushed back while bickering. After giving her sprawling silver hair a toss, he urged her back into a combat stance._

_Serena, however, asked a question;_

_"Torgo Nudho. Did you know him? Jon Snow, I mean. Did you know my father?"_

_His entire posture stiffened. His face that had softened turned hard with an angry expression. He couldn't even bear to hear his name being associated that way with her._

_"You should ask your mother," he told her quietly, careful not to let his feelings about it encourage her to make more questions._

_"I did. She speaks little of him," she responded, looking at him with narrowed eyes. In that expression, Torgo Nudho saw again the man they were talking about.The man who sired her and then killed her alongside her mother. A traitor._

_"I cannot tell you what she doesn't," and he was honest by saying this. Although long ago the relationship between him and Daenerys had fluctuated from the dutifulness of a soldier with his queen_ _to a convivial friendship, her wishes were still orders to him. And she wanted to be the one who would one day tell her daughter the whole truth._

_"There's something you are not telling me. I want to know!" Serena protested._

_While most of the time a composed, well-behaved child, a child she still was. He'd been bonded to her since the midwife first placer her on his arms and her mother scorned her because of the circumstances of her birth. At that moment, he had returned to be that same young man without emotions or feeling that was ordered to cut the neck of a newborn as part of his training. He was willing to carry out the task of delivering the babe to her father. But then Serena opened her eyes and saw in them, not Jon Snow but Missandei of Naath. She would never have allowed their queen to hand the girl over to the same man who had killed her even before she was born._

_Realization struck him then and he decided that he would never give that man everything that Torgo Nudho lost and that he had so lightly rejected -- the love of a woman and a child. Serena had reminded Torgo Nudho of the things he had come to yearn just because of Missandei._

_"Princess..." he said softly before realizing she detested being called that way._

_"Why do you call me that? I am not a princess! We were stolen from our home and crown!" she blurted out, storming out of the training yard._

* * *

**_Meereen, 315 AC_ **

_"Did you like it?" Muña asked her when they took their seats after landing on the terrace of the great pyramid. Landing from Drogon's back. Serena had finally experienced what it was like to fly._

_Something inside her pulsed. She could still feel up there, soaring and the wind beating her face aggressively._

_"I've never felt what I felt today," she confessed lying on her mother's lap and looking up at the starry sky. Today ten years ago she had come to this world. A pinkish bunch of kicks and screams, as Daenerys used to recall._

_"That's the dragon blood running within you," Daenerys whispered while running her fingers through her silver curls. "_ _Nonetheless," she put on a more serious tone, "You should never climb Drogon without me, Serena. You are still young and, I don't want anything to happen to you."_

_Serena laughed a little, still enthralled. This has been her greatest wish ever since her mother had told her that she was the Drogon's rider. And she could feel how Drogon was also ecstatic to have her._

_"It's fine, Muña."_

_And although the night could have continued in a quiet conversation, Daenerys remembered the words she had said to Torgo Nudho in Braavos a while ago when she told him about Serena's outburst._

_When she turns ten, it will be time to tell her the truth._

_It could have been earlier, considering that Serena was an exceptionally intelligent and mature child. A growth forced by the circumstances in which they lived, disappearances, and constant travel that deserved an explanation. People who had accompanied Daenerys since those days of the past and who slid down their tongues -- unintentionally -- revelations that elicited more questions._

_Dany knew it could mean losing her daughter's love forever, but the truth always found its way to the light. She learned it in the worst way possible._

_"We were not stolen from our home," she started staying, startling Serena, "We were once when I was a babe, and me and your uncle Viserys had to run away."_

_Serena straighten up and looked at her mother with wide, watchful eyes. She knew about her uncle Viserys._

_"I wish I had known him," she said wholeheartedly. She wished they had more family alive. But Muña seemed to think otherwise, because she looked away and laughed softly, shaking her head._

_"He was...a harmed man."_

_"What does that mean?"_

_"He wasn't the kind of company you'd want to keep. He used to treat me not as a family should treat family."_

_Serena cringed. She heard about things like that._

_"Did he...hurt you?" she asked with a shaking voice._

_Her mother's response was to stay silent and look at her hands in her lap, a gesture that spoke more than a thousand words. Serena then hugged her very tightly, trying to hide the tears of resentment and hatred that welled in her eyes. But she couldn't cry, not now. The only times her mother cried were in those moments of happiness. Serena couldn't be weak._

_"I had another brother," Daenerys revelead after putting a kiss on her daughter's cheek to let her know she was fine. Serena pulled away and looked at her with raised eyebrows. She never told her about Rhaegar. "_ _His name was Rhaegar. He died before I was born. My father was a king. My mother a queen. You know that. We descend from a dynasty that reigned Westeros for almost three centuries before the rebellion that deposed my father and killed my older brother. You are old enough now to know some things I couldn't tell you when you were younger," she raised her hand and stroke her cheek. "When I was a little older than you, I married with a man of the Dothraki. Their Khal. His name was Drogo."_

_The Dothraki. They have been part of her life. She learned to ride a horse and shoot an arrow with them. And yet she had never questioned how they came to be part of their little circle of acquaintances, mostly because they weren't people who talked too much. Muña was Khaleesi to them and she was the Khalakka. It was the same with the Unsullied. Although she knew that there had to be a reason for all those people to follow them, Serena knew that the reason preceded her birth and therefore shouldn't matter too much._

_Until now._

_"You told me my father's name was--"_

_"He wasn't your father, Serena. But he was the father of my first child."_

_Oh, R'hollor, Serena thought._

_"I had a brother?" she asked, mistrustful._

_Daenerys smiled but it was stained with sadness._

_"You did. His name was Rhaego and the Dothraki believed he would be the Khal of Khals who would conquer the world."_

_He was. So he was no more._

_"He died?" She asked her._

_Her mother's lips pursed and she shook her head again._

_"He never lived. A witch...she killed him and killed Drogo."_

_All of those things must have happened a long time before she was even born, she correctly deduced. And her mother must have been very young when all this happened._

_"I am so sorry, Muña," she again embraced her, seriously wishing she could be able to take away all the pain she knew she was feeling._

_"It's okay, my love," Dany said in her attempt to ease her, "It happened so long ago. That wound had long healed."_

_How? Serene wondered._

_"What happened after that?"_

_"My children born," Muña replied, looking happy and sad again. "Viserion, Rhaegal, and Drogon."_

_"There were more?"_

_Dany wiped away lonely tear and nodded._

_"There so many things you must know. I will tell you every single thing when you are ready to hear it but first, you must know who I am. What I was and what I am because of it. They called me the Mother of Dragons. My children were the first dragon born in more than a century and when that happened I believed it was...destiny. I believed they were given to me so I could fulfill a much greater purpose."_

_"The Dothraki...they tell stories about everything you've done! Now I understand--"_

_"They don't tell you eveyrhintg," Daenerys cut her off._

_"Well, no. They never told me of Drogon's siblings..."_

_"I tell them not to. I know you deserved to know it but...they died. And just as Rhaego's death, their deaths caused great pain in my heart."_

_"I see. That's why Drogon is always sad," she mulled it over._ _"Muña. Drogon misses you. He was you mount, right?"_

_Daenerys could only huff._

_"Once," she answered._

_"But you told me no dragon has two riders unless..."_

_"...unless the rider dies," Dany finally confirmed. "I_ _returned to Westeros with my three children, the Dothraki and the Unsullied_ _Missandei, Ser Jorah, and of course, Torgo Nudho._ _I lost them too."_

_Serena swallowed hard and looked up with a frown. For the first time since they had started talking, she felt icy cold, as if she were about to discover something that maybe she didn't need to know._

_Death. It was the first time the mention of it raised the hair on the body._

_"Muña. What happened in Westeros?"_

* * *

_**Castle Black**._

_The last time he had suffered from such a strong fever, Jon was a boy. He remembered the distant voices that spoke of how he was not going to survive or make it through the night. Lady Catelyn furiously telling the healers to keep trying to heal him as if she really cared about his well-being. This time, it was Sam dictating to the other healers to keep placing cloths on his forehead and body. Little by little he lost consciousness as the voices grew more distant._

_If death came looking for him, he would welcome her with open arms. The only fear he had is that again there would be nothing on the other side for this time he did have something to die for;_ _the desire to see someone again._

_The fever spiked and he became delirious._

_"Serena! Serena!" Dany's voice was crying out and he was crying out at the same time, albeit in just a whisper that Gilly and Sam couldn't understand._

_In his mind it was clearly Dany's voice and it made his heart race._

_"Stay away! I hate you! You are a monster!" answered a younger voice, almost childish and broken._

_Jon murmured a defensive, contrary response: Dany was not a monster. But no one was hearing him._

_"Please, Serena. Don't do this. It's cold and it's raining," Dany's voice pleaded with this other person. A girl. Her daughter? Their daughter? No. It was not possible. Dany was dead. Gone many years ago and now just a memory._

_"I don't care. I don't want to be with you!"_

_It was like a dagger in his heart, a throbbing wound that would not heal. He wishes to be dead._

_"Serena, please, you are going to get sick!" Dany pleaded again, this time sobbing through the rain falling around her._

_"Better. I wish to be dead," the girl replied. Jon couldn't see her, only hear her voice. It was a beautiful voice but full of suffering and sadness._

_"Please, don't say that," Dany wailed._

_"Serena! Climb down, now!" another voice bellowed and this time he recognized who it was. Jon had heard him repeatedly giving orders._

_"Or what? You are not my father! You can't tell me what to do! I wish to be dead!"_

_In the early morning, as light filtered through the simple shed he was sleeping in, Jon woke startled from the dream but remembered nothing nor_ _knew that he had had a dragon dream linked to Serena, his daughter._

_Miles away in Meereen, Serena had forgotten the promise she had made to her mother not to fly Drogon on her own. Why should she keep a promise if her mother had broken all hers?_

_Hidden in a mountain cave where Drogon had made one of his nests, she stayed there for long hours until Torgo Nudho and the other Unsullied found her, shivering with cold and dehydrated._

* * *

When she opened her eyes again, Edd was holding her in his lap, his face disfigured with fear.

"You're bleeding!" he had pointed out to the skirt of her dress with rips and other damages. The clothes she wore to hide from who she really was from the mad queen's victims. The victims of her mother. 

She knew it and yet she had never measured it in this way. Her mother had killed many people...she had killed children. Children even younger than Serena herself. And that was why Jon, her father, had driven a dagger into her heart, killing her too.

A loud sob escaped her throat and she pulled out of her cousin's grasp, feeling her dirty body burn. A twinge in her nether parts and more blood running down her legs.

* * *

_What are you doing?_ The thought startled her. Dany pulled away from the kiss and turned around trying to put distance between her and what she had just done.

Jon stood still trying to figure out what would be the right thing to do. Before, he would have walked away to avoid having to face possible rejection but she had asked him to _stay_ and that, for him at least, meant that he would have to stay through the moments of doubt as well.

Before either of them could say anything, three knocks on the door snapped them out of stupor.

Dany was astounded, looking at the door and fearing it would open and reveal her. She turned once more to Jon and with a single glance he understood that he must leave the same way he arrived: without anyone noticing.

She watched him walk behind the folding screen where there was a hidden entrance that she hadn't been aware of until now and made a mental reminder to deal with it.

After making sure everything was in order, she went to the door and opened it, finding her daughter on the other side, looking not like her daughter in ordinary clothes stained a dark shade of blood. Her face was contorted with a pout and tears were running down her cheeks soiled with dirt and dust.


	19. Aimlessly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Serena experiences confused feelings about her identity as a Targaryen as her parents continue to grow closer and a matter of urgency has arisen in the North.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HNY!

**XIX.**

**Aimlessly**

"Can I have a little more water, please?" Dany spoke to Vizi, who had just finished cleaning the chambers. Serena's fever had subsided a bit but little spasms still ran through her body. Luckily, she had fallen asleep as soon as she drank the milk of the poppy that the Maester supplied. Dany hadn't wanted to turn to him, knowing perfectly well of their meddlesome nature. The other option was burning a toad and she didn't want Serena's first flowering to go like this.

Her baby. In her eyes, Serena was just a child. After barging into her room wearing shabby clothes and a dirty face, Dany had thought the worst. But then Serena explained her first moonblood came while she was training. 

Dany sensed something was amiss, but aware of the discomfort of Serena after what had happened to her body, she decided to wait until her daughter was better to find out what had happened in truth. 

A person strode into the room and for a moment she thought it was Jon and turned around with a racing heart. She watched as Torgo Nudho walked across the threshold, with his eyes settled on Serena, his expression growing soft.

He sat opposite Dany on the bed, taking Serena's hand as he regarded her tenderly. 

"How is she?" he asked.

Dany blinked. "She is well."

Somehow, she managed to feel guilty for her latest behavior as if she had committed a transgression. He would never forgive her for what she'd done.

"We prepared a bath for her to help her clean herself. The bleeding gave her a slight fever but it's normal. She will survive," she explained. 

Torgo Nudho nodded.

"She is a survivor like her mother." Then he took a deep breath and looked up with eyes that cut deep. "I don't like him. The kid."

"Eddard? He's just a child," Dany tried to argue although she herself sheltered little affection for the boy. 

"Your enemy's child," he stressed.

The thought of his mother, that quickly embittered her.

"That's too much importance for such a small person." She had wanted to believe. "She's my subject now."

A hoarse sound escaped his throat. Dany wondered if he already knew.

"The first time he failed you because of them. His split loyalties always favored his family over you. Over Serena eventually."

"It's not the time nor the place to speak of that--" 

The sound of the door opening in the foyer and footsteps approaching the bedchamber made both of them jump at the sudden disruption. Soon Jon bursted in, his expression of worry alike. 

"Daenerys," he called as if he was restraining himself from getting closer and it was taking a great deal of effort. "They told me she's gotten sick."

"She's not sick," she quickly dismissed; "She has experienced her first flowering. It is when a woman has her mense--"

"I know what it means," Jon cut her off. He shifted uncomfortably while standing. "I'm sorry. I just--don't know what I should say. Will she be okay?"

She couldn't stand the view of him while her people were around so she turned to attend to their daughter. What a great shame she felt.

"She will. You can visit her tomorrow." 

Dany hoped he wasn't hurt by it but their position was not one they could idly put on display. Marry him has been easier compared to stand in the same room after what they did.

"Alright," she heard Jon said before leaving. He stopped in his tracks and asked: "Are _you_ fine?"

Her heart jumped in her chest. She was sure that if she turned around at that moment she would find his eyes looking at her with that strange intensity that she tried to ignore for the good of both of them and of the daughter they shared.

"I am; Thank you."

She listened to the sounds of his withdrawal as Torgo Nudho glared at her. Her life had been divided again into two worlds that Daenerys believed would never coalesce. 

* * *

She had a recurring dream in which she was a dragon in the literal sense. A fire-breathing dragon, breaking the wind with her wings and crying out to the sky with a shrill roar. With scales that would be bright red and skin that burned like wildfire. A dream that had turned into a nightmare when the wind on her face turned to blood splatters and the triumphant roars in her throat to agonizing screams. Suddenly the fire would engulf her in its fiery intensity and her skin would melt down exposing her charred black bones.

Vizi shook her to wake her up and give her more of that sweet liquid to ease her soreness. Serena still felt that annoying and painful sensation in her belly and in her legs that now would be recurring in her life -- she only hoped that it was not so catastrophic the next time. 

When Muña came to the chambers to check on her, she pretended to be asleep, unable to face her although inside she was yearning for her warm embrace. In a way, it felt like that dream of the dragon, something she had thought beautiful and powerful -- her home -- and now had become something totally strange and terrifying. 

Serena had learned of her mother's crime the same night she learned of her father's. Her existence became a nightmare. A murderous mother and a kinslayer father. Her dragon blood was stained with madness and ruthlessness and now she was perhaps the possessor of that power that had brought only cruelty to the world.

It had been Torgo Nudho who brought sense and clarity to her mind, telling her of the savageness in the world that her mother had fought against and then of the great sacrifice that took so much from them. He told her about Missandei of Naath, and how with her unfair assassination, her mother had lost the last bit of hope she had known, ignoring that she was already carrying Serena in her womb. And he told her how in her most vulnerable moments, her allies -- her own father amongst them -- had teamed up to plot against her and finally oust her to take what was theirs. The Starks and the Lannisters. 

Serena had hated them then. More than for their betrayal, for having taken away the mother she had revered.

Her mother's crime became more of an incident in her eyes, the inevitable display of the dragon's wrath. Like Aegon and Visenya in the face of the unjust death of Queen Rhaenys. 

Never had those stories taken the dimension that they now took, children killed and mutilated by the person she loved most in this world. 

Was this how Jon felt?

Serena knew her father too little, surely not the way Eddard or her infant cousin Lya did, or Tormund or even her mother. He was kind and genuine to her, stern when he taught her to use a sword, and melancholic when he wanted to know more about her life before and she told him. He was not the image of the traitor that Torgo Nudho painted for her, nor was he the vacant and blurred presence in her mother's eyes each time they would talk about him. Now they were married but they didn't love each other and it made all the sense in the world that they didn't, being who they were and what they had done. The love between them had caused only pain, for them and for others. It was good that there was no more of that.

Jon called her Dany sometimes but that didn't mean anything, she believed. Although no one ever called her mother that way.

Serena opened her eyes to see shadows reigning the room. She stayed that way until she only heard the hollow sound of the wind and the bright light of the moon that came through the window.

* * *

"We have to talk about the North," Ben announced after a long anecdote session that had started in the hallway and made its way to the Small Council room without her being able to discourage it. Jon was the last of the members to arrive, his stoic gaze softening until he noticed his wife's active conversation with the traveler, explorer, and investor. His displeasure only worsened upon hearing that statement.

"What about the North?" Daenerys asked quietly, setting aside the reports in front of her. Jon fleetingly eyed the word Meereen on one of them.

"Ever since The Black arrived at White Harbor things have improved."

"Then what is the problem?"

The conversation between the two continued.

"The great whole in their arcs. I've talked to you of this before," Ben spoke in an assertive tone away from his merry prattle. "The North is an austere territory with very little productivity. If it stagnates and does not follow the outline of our meticulous plan, then soon that void will become a cesspool where all our goals and expectations are going to be dragged into. I have never told you about the ones they have in Asshai? An unappealing affair--"

Daenerys cut off his spiel casting a stern look at Bran and asking him, "Anything you would like to share with your council, Your Grace?"

The room fell silent. The king's intervention was seldom required, and these meetings were just a routine endeavor to check that everyone's interests were in the same place: the Realm. Daenerys had the first and last word, she being the one who mainly provided the resources so said kingdom would not reel in its own rubble. However, Ben's presence reminded them every so often that Daenerys was not serving her own interest, not entirely. Far was the Dragon Queen from being the claiming monarch and leader of armies that went to the end of the world to fight for life. Now she displayed a more mundane image, a contradiction to who she was and what she had been through.

Bran, who perhaps understood the world as a game where the pieces had to be moved carefully so as not to lose the game, was unfazed by the sudden reference to his person.

"You should travel up North and see it yourself that the money is being well harnessed--" Bran spoke in a monotonous voice and eyes focused on Daenerys until they turned towards her partner, "Lord Ben."

A surge of anger rose up Daenerys' guts and she tried her best to control with hard and clear words:

"I won't send Ben up there by his own. It's a question. Do you know what is going on with your sister and her husband, or not?"

Jon took a confused look at her and tried to play down the growing annoyance inside him. Not because of her words to Bran or the subtle implication that Sansa and her husband, not people of his devotion, were behind this mess but because of the display of fierce protectiveness towards Ben's person. Something that he should understand if it were not for the confused and contradictory feelings between them.

"You fear for your people, given your last and only visit. The North is proud even in its ruins. Fear not though, I'm sure the experience will add one more story to Lord Ben's ample record," Bran reassured.

The rawness of the remainder of the last time her people and herself were there served to lessen Jon's restless. He shot a glance at Ser Davos who with an expression of sympathy.

Jon didn't notice when Bran's gaze fell upon him.

"Perhaps even Jon could accompany him and take Serena with him. She's part a northerner herself, after all. It is in her blood."

It was too much then. At the same time, Serena's parents blurted out their refusal to even consider it:

"No!" they shouted at the King. 

Jon inadvertently began to understand Daenerys' rising anger a few moments ago. He could see in his mind images of the same looks of scorn and resentment from the people directed at his daughter and feel his blood boil in his veins. 

"We are speaking of business here. How the little girl has something to do with all of it?" Ben also interjected. 

The Grand Maester Gullwuth made the contribution that overflowed the cup.

"She's growing. Just last night she's flowered. Soon we should start considering suitable matches for she must take on the duties of her official role as a representative of the crown."

Daenerys held back, having anticipated that the subject would come up. Jon didn't have that advantage.

"She is just a child!" he cried out almost in agony. Suddenly he felt as if they were taking something from him that he had just recovered. He felt the worst pang of all.

"May you forgive me, my lord, if I'm being too rash in my words but she's a flowered maiden. Considering she's a very likely candidate to succeed the King, he, who will sit by her side must be someone we could--"

"I agree. Serena is just a child. She doesn't need to be pestered with grownups affairs yet," Lord Ben again made a point. Jon might not be happy about his constant meddling and exuberance but he couldn't deny that the man had a genuine concern for his family.

"A child may be today, but tomorrow she can be the queen of the seven kingdoms and the heir to a great legacy that must continue beyond her."

They all turned to wait for Daenerys' answer.

"My child will not be sold off like a brood mere," she snarled. Chilly eyes that nailed icicles to the Maester's decrepit frame. 

Jon took a deep breath, bringing himself some calm.

"If you need me, I will make that journey," he heard Lord Ben softly say, and he was sure that if he opened his eyes he would find the look between two confidants. The very thing their marriage lacked for and perhaps would never have. 

Had he opened his eyes, he would have seen Dany staring at him. 

"I'll think about it," she replied with her eyes on Jon.

All the members of the Small Council got up to start off their respective routines except for Daenerys who stayed right there in her place waiting for everyone to leave so she could take a moment to herself. The last to walk towards the entrance was Jon who stopped at the archway and came back.

"I have to discuss something with you," he said.

Daenerys raised her eyebrows and looked puzzled but nodded, beckoning her guards so they would walk outside into the hallway and allow them privacy. The time that had elapsed had made them more pliable on this last matter, much to the displeasure of Torgo Nudho.

She got up to walk toward the arch to the terrace. She did not feel like talking about the previous matter of the North (his family) and much less with him, so she decided to take the reins of the conversation.

"Have you visited Serena?"

"Not yet," Jon replied, positioning himself to the side of the table and closer to her. “I don't know what I'm supposed to say or if she would want to see me.” His hand went to scratch his forehead. "I don't know what to do. I don't have the experience or the knowledge on this."

Daenerys smiled a little.

"Most men don't. You shouldn't feel bad about it."

Most men are not her father, Jon thought bitterly.

"You know what I mean. Grey Worm. Lord Ben, they know her better than I do."

Her smile faded.

"Torgo Nudho has loved her before anyone else," she said very seriously. Someday maybe she could tell him about it all but not now. "I can't, and I won't change that. But Ben, he's like that and he loves her as well but she favors him not more than she favors you. I've seen you both when you are together. She loves you."

"And you."

Daenerys started in surprise. "And me?"

"Lord Ben. He loves you."

She opened her mouth and blinked repeatedly, understanding what he was referring to.

"Are you asking me if I love him?"

Daenerys leaned against the wall, both arms behind her, and looked at him intently. On Jon's face, she could see conflict and uncertainty. He seemed so sincere that it made the raised walls around her heart rattle.

"He has been my friend for many years. He has helped me cope with difficult situations and overcome unimaginable obstacles," she confessed.

His expression and posture fell with her statement and for an instant, she was tempted to leave it as it was.

She could not.

"But not in the way he would like me to love him."

His eyes were on hers and they looked at each other for a long time. She had just given him something he didn't deserve and that was conviction.

The rapture seized him. Jon wanted to be closer. And so he did. But the sudden movement however, had awakened her most basic survival instincts and Daenerys quickly moved away.

"Not here," she pleaded, her back to him because it was easier for her to trust the idea that he wouldn't do something as dishonorable as hurt her while she was in that position. And because when he looked into her eyes, her walls began to crack.

Daenerys heard him sigh and take a few steps closer. She hugged herself and took a deep breath, holding back the need of fleeing. One of Jon's hands touched her arm and shortly afterward she felt him gently kissing her head.

What were they doing? She silently asked herself.

"You are my family. Serena and you."

Jon took off and left Dany alone with her ruminations. 

* * *

Her mother arrived later in the morning when Serena was already dressed in her training clothes. She was quick to make excuses but Daenerys would have none of that.

"I'm better now. It was just the bloom. I was embarrassed and sore but now I'm better. I promise."

All this was said quickly while she looked at the carpet on the floor. A shag that surely did not belong to the Red Keep furnishings and they had brought them from some remote part of Essos. 

"Serena, the night before last night you came in not only bathed in your own blood but with dirt--"

"I told you I was training! Why do you have to bother me so much about it?"

Daenerys moved forward and Serena started back.

"Serena, what is it?" she asked alarmed, searching the eyes of her daughter.

"I don't want anyone else to touch me," she snapped, looking up, apprehensive. "I just want to go back to when things were normal. Will you please give me my leave, Mother?"

Daenerys frowned and swallowed hard. Girls and women, in general, had to be treated with special patience on the days of their moonblood, she knew. 

"We are still going to talk about what happened here, do you understand?"

Serena raised challenging eyes to her.

"Perhaps," she said and made her way out.

Not hugs or kisses. She was mad at her mother and the latter couldn't figure out why.

Daenerys let out a frustrated sigh and lay down on her bed, tired and sore from sleeping on the settee last night. She still had so much on her mind and so little time in the day to satisfy the demands of her attention that all her activities required.

* * *

Jon walked into the King's chambers. His royal guard glanced at him and he nodded in recognition.

"Ser Podrick. You allow us a moment alone?"

The guard looked towards Bran who also nodded in agreement. After that, he walked outside closing the doors behind him.

"You have found the secret passages Maegor built," Bran did not wait. 

"Yes. Many of them are connected to each other, over and over, like mazes," Jon said.

"Daenerys' attack sealed many and made new ones. The people below can't even suspect that they have an upward path right next to them."

Bran seemed almost amused.

"I am going to seal those tunnels. They pose a danger to the security of the castle," Jon pointed very seriously. A threat to his family.

Bran observed him carefully. 

"It is not the security of the castle that you'd come to discuss. If so, this conversation would be different." 

"What happens in the North?"

"Go Nort and find out."

"Enough games Bran," Jon snapped. Eyes brimming with fury. "You have the possibility to prevent this from escalating to greater severity if you tell me right now what is happening with Sansa and her husband."

"And how is that going to happen, Jon? Are you going to stand up against Sansa and her administration in the North? I never could and I'm the last living son of Eddard Stark. And the King of the Seven Kingdoms but that's hardly something they would reckon of importance."

"Why do you want us there? Me and my daughter. Do you think I'm going to keep overlooking it? The way you move the pieces of the little game in your mind?"

"It's not a little game. It's a great game. And it hasn't bothered you before."

"What do you mean?"

Bran stared silently. Perhaps a show of hesitation if Jon hadn't known it well.

"When I sent you the letter warning you of the dead going to Eastwatch. When I told Samwell that it was time for you to know the truth. When I did not speak of Euron's forces waiting for Daenerys at Dragonstone."

Jon crossed the room until he stood in front of his brother. 

"When I told you that you were exactly where you should be," Bran said looking up to him from his chair. "Everything happens for a great reason. The good and the bad. You must know this."

Sounds from the bay came through the window and it was the only thing that could be heard besides Jon's heavy breathing.

Suddenly Jon's hand went around his brother's slender neck. He didn't squeeze it but did hold it tight enough to push his head back and look into his dark eyes just like his and Serena's.

"If any damage befalls my daughter or my wife, I will return you, piece by piece, to the cold hole in the North where you came from."

Jon knew that he was not directing his words to his brother who had long since ceased to exist but to the entity that was embedded in his body.

"Threatening the King is a crime, Aegon," Bran purposely tempted him. "You don't want to be exiled a second time for the same crime? Or do you?"

Jon's hand shook with restrained and suppressed anger but he finally gave in and took a few steps back, regarding the image of the Bran that he really was when he was not hiding under the facade of the indifferent and absent king.

Jon turned around and stormed out of there.

* * *

Muña had said she shouldn't train but Serena ignored it. She showed up in the training room where Eddard and other people (mostly men) were. Normally she would not feel uncomfortable but that day she felt a wave of inexplicable heat and itching on her scalp. 

Since her father had assumed his new position, most days it was just her and her cousin. Serena noticed that the Unsullied --and Brown Fox especially -- were watching her.

A blow from Eddard came too hard and she fell to the floor, causing several in the room to move to aid her. She scared them all away.

"I am fine!" Serena shouted at them.

Brown Fox walked away but not before giving the boy a warning look. Eddard ran to extend a hand to his cousin.

"Let me help you," he said. 

Serena took advantage of the moment to whisper softly to his ear, "We have to go back."

He waited a second to answer.

"Are you insane? Your guard is watching us!" Eddard whispered back.

"I'll tell them I would go to see Drogon. Just wait for me at the stairs."

"Why?"

But Serena didn't answer.

She went to the kitchen with the excuse of being hungry. When she had had enough food for an afternoon feast, she responded to the cook's inquiring gaze with:

"My dragon likes treats!"

It was a lie.

Along the way, she wondered why she didn't better say the food was for Ghost -- he did like treats.

It was difficult to get rid of Brown Fox but Serena finally managed it after insisting that she needed to go down to see Drogon.

On the stairs, Eddard was already waiting for her with her change of clothes.

"What is this?" Eddard questioned her sack of sweets and bottles of juice.

"Stuff," she tried to brush off but he snatched the sack from her hands, "Hey, give me that!"

Eddard's brow furrowed.

"Why are you carrying this?"

Serena took it back.

"For our friends?"

"Our friends? Serena, they are not your friends. They are not even my friends! If they know who you are, they would turn you on the closest person around and hang you on the streets of Flea Botton!"

He sounded as desperate as she when she tried to convince him not to wander the streets again.

"These are people your mother almost killed and whose families she massacred!"

"I know! I know it and I am trying to help them!" she cried out, "I cannot return their families but I can--try to make something good. I am good. I am not like my mother."

Eddard backed away and looked at her.

"No, you are not."

Serena held the sack tightly in her hands.

"I am not mad," she insisted though none was saying so.

His cousin's rueful expression deepened even more.

"I didn't want to say that of your mother the other time--"

"But it's true. She is mad. She did that to those children."

He scratched his head.

"I'm sorry, Serena." He didn't know what else to say. "They will be so happy."

Serena nodded and pointed with her head to the secret passage. 

"I hope so," she whispered.

* * *

Daenerys got up with a start when she heard a sound coming from behind the folding screen.

A half sharp-pitched cry left her throat as she instinctively was about to shout a call for her guards. Instead, she shut herself up at the sight of her Lord Husband. 

"So this is how you sneaked into these chambers," Daenerys annoyingly commented, climbing out of bed. Her restless hands slid down her skirts, soothing the fabric. She was still on her shift from the morning, she thought inadvertently aware of her appearance. Jon was in his uniform, and in his hand, he carried a lamp. 

Jon looked at his wife in name and assessed her expression, searching for any signs of discomfiture. Even in the distance, he could see her weariness.

"I didn't want to disturb you. I took the quickest way."

"Serena was here," Dany pointed out, "If she had seen you--"

The possibility of it hung between them like an unwanted scenario. Jon understood. If it was still complicated for them, he didn't want to imagine how it could be for their little one.

His heart leaped at that thought. For the first time, that image in his head was beginning to take shape, the image of the three of them. Something possible and achievable.

Bran. He had to tell her about Bran's words.

They stood in silence until Jon pointed to the secret entrance.

"Do you want to go and see them yourself?" he asked her.

* * *

Happy they were. Ecstatic indeed. Lucan, Duncan, Taiena, and even Tavis crouched down to devour the small feast she brought them. 

Serena had met hungry children before; they had walked through the villages of the lamb path where lived the lamb people. People who did not wage war and were defenseless against the attacks of the Dothraki hordes who renounced the authority of the dragon.

Her Muña would make her sit and dine with those children who did not know a thing about manners. Serena had hated it and cried for Muña to take her home with her good manners, clean utensils, and pleasant smells. The one who does not have good manners is you if you cannot share the table with children who do not have the same luck, Daenerys had answered her.

"So you get these from a royal wagon? You must be mad to rob the fucking king!" Taiena said with a mouth full of cream. "The Dragon Queen might kill us all tonight but at least my belly will be full of these!" 

"She will not," Serena hurried in. Guilt building in her stomach.

"I will burn the entire city for these," Duncan broke in to say. "Hey--!"

Tavis pushed him by the shoulder and the boy fell onto his side, dumping his dirt-stained treat with him. Little did he care as he continued to eat from it.

"Believe me, you don't want to know what it's like," Tavis somberly added.

This was the boy whose mother had been killed by a Dothraki. A savage had he called them. And he himself had a scar with him that bore witness of that day.

Serena needed to know more, even if it hurt.

"What is it like?" she quietly asked him. 

Eddard was in back, leaning against a wooden column, and he frowned at her question.

Tavis scoffed if it were something that amused him and at the same time, haunted him. 

"The skin fell off and underneath there was no meat but charred bones, black as night."

Serena's shoulders slumped just like her expression.

"I wish every day you could catch one of these wagons," Lucan commented indifferently. 

"I can," Serena quickly assured. 

"What do you mean?" 

Eddard broke in then. "She's just exaggerating. Obviously, she wants us killed," he said, emphasizing the double meaning.

Not so far from the truth, Eddard said they should return before her parents notice her absence. He picked her up and push her out of the barn where the encounter was taking place. However, Serena continued to elaborate on her plan,

"I can get more of these if you like," she said to their commonfolk friends.

"Where?" they all asked. 

"I'm going to figure it out."

* * *

Although King's Landing was mostly a warm place, Red Keep had a structure that allowed drafts from the bay through its long corridors and high ceilings. The secret passages, in addition to favoring these structures, were shady places that contributed to the permanence of the cool environment. It had become Jon's favorite place and Daenerys smiled at the appropriateness of it.

"I wonder who made them," Dany wondered, giving careful steps. She looped her arm through his, her fist clenched on his strong forearm. Daenerys didn't know if it was because of how nervous she was or if she was really enjoying it. She could excuse herself on the slippery ground anyway.

"King Maegor, probably," Jon responded by recalling Maester Luwin's lessons on the matter and smiling at the particularly strong squeeze he received. He could barely see anything in that darkness except the side of Dany's face that was lit by the lamp but he knew he would find her with a soft blush on her cheeks.

"How many of them there are?"

"At least a hundred are marked on the maps."

"You took your new job very seriously," Daenerys observed with a half-smile. "I've never asked you, what were you doing in The Wall all these years?"

"We were serving as the North's patrol." 

"And did you like it?"

Jon mulled it over. 

"It made us feel useful," he said.

"Us?" Daenerys felt curious. 

"What kind of people do you think that lives up there?" He lightly quipped. 

Criminals, Daenerys answered herself. 

"You are not what they are. You were not a criminal," she stated. 

"I was in the eyes of the Realm." And in his own eyes.

"Your family could have done more for you--"

"I didn't want them to do anything for me."

Dany unhooked her arm.

"I see it," she said sternly. 

"What do you see?"

"That no matter how much they screw you over. You will love them anyhow."

He stopped abruptly while Dany kept walking a few more steps before turning to face him.

"I just believe I am responsible for my own deeds," Jon made it clear.

"Was it your deed that Sansa betrayed your trust?"

"She did what she did with the information I gave her and still, that was not the crime for which I was sentenced sent to the Wall."

He was nowhere near defending Sansa or the Starks. Much less now he bore the weight of knowledge of Bran's actions (or inaction). Something that kept waiting on the tip of his tongue.

"Dany--" he began to say but unrest had washed over her.

"I shouldn't be here," she said, hugging herself and backing away to put distance between them. The more she moved away from Jon, the more the shadows dragged her. 

"Please, don't be scared of me. I will never--"

A shout. It was all it took for him to drop the lamp in his hand and run towards her, grabbing her body but feeling that she was being pulled by a superior force that wanted to take her out of his grasp. A void that tried to swallow her.

Daenerys gulped in air and was numb for a moment, hearing just a whistle sound in the back of her mind. 

When she regained consciousness, she felt nothing where her feet could support her and the soreness in her body where the harsh ground had scraped along. 

Beneath her was only a dark void.

Another kind of pain shot up her arm, an iron stretch upward and Jon's fingers digging into her skin in his attempt to hoist her up.

"Dany!--" he cried out, voice choked with effort.

"Do not let me fall! Don't let go of me, Jon! Jon!"

"I will not!"

Jon bent his arm and held on as best he could but that didn't work for long, the force of the void dragging her down was too much. His muscles burned and he saw only one way to save her or condemn them both.

With all of his might and feeling something broke inside him, he threw Dany to one side so she became lighter to pull her up.

Daenerys finished climbing and they both fell backward, her on top of him, away from the hole he had been too careless to see on the maps.

Jon hugged her, drawing her little body against his so he wouldn't feel again that he was losing her. They had been deadly minutes.

"You almost killed me! Again! You bloody, fucking bastard!" Daenerys sobbed into his chest.

"I didn't know, I swear I didn't know!" Jon apologized, trying to calm her down as he stroked her hair. If she only knew the emotions that were running through him at that moment. Guilt. Shame. Relief. Despair. Love.

His hands ran over her body to verify that her presence was real.

"You are hurt, Dany," he said after touching her on a sensitive part and hearing her wail.

* * *

There was no one in the chambers when they returned. Daenerys had asked that she not be disturbed and be allowed a moment of rest. If only they'd know.

"We need the Maester," Jon said as he laid her on her bed and stared at the torn fabric of her blood-stained dress.

"Not," Daenerys replied sternly. 

"Your people then."

"No! Don't--just hand me your dagger." Dany searched where he had left his weapons. "Hand it to me!" She rushed him, overwhelmed by pain and fear of being discovered. "And brought that chest to me," she pointed to a small wooden chest on top of the sideboard.

Jon forced himself. He took first the chest and then the dagger, hesitating for a moment as Daenerys's eyes widened as he approached with the object.

Once the moment passed, she took the things that he handed her and took from the chest a glass bottle with a transparent liquid that she drank immediately.

"What is that?" He couldn't avoid but ask.

Dany glare at him.

"Does it matter? Leave!"

"Why?"

"I have to rip off my dress!"

"I'll help you--"

"--You will see the scar!"

That gave him pause. Although she was enraged and overwhelmed, there was a certain vulnerability in her gaze that broke his heart.

I'm so sorry, Dany. I'm so sorry, he said in his head countless times.

"Please," then she begged.

Jon turned around but felt that he wasn't doing what he was supposed to do. When he heard behind him the movements of her effort, he decided it was enough of shielding behind their regrets.

When he returned, Daenerys had exposed her belly and cut the sleeves off her dress.

Jon knelt beside the bed.

"Tell me what can I do to help you," he begged her this time, startling her.

Daenerys hesitated but finally nodded and showed him what was going to happen.

"This," she said holding up another glass container, "Is going to prevent the wound from infecting. I can feel that it is not deep but if it does not heal it--"

Jon went to wash his own hands before coming back and take the vial from her hands. He followed the prompts she was murmuring through the pain and helped her clean the wounds and scrub some ointment in it.

* * *

He quietly rested in a chair next to her bed. She had told him she needed to sleep at least some minutes and Jon hadn't wanted to leave her side ever since then. In the silence, he stared at the wound on her belly now covered by a bandage. Above it was the hint of the scar he had put there with his dagger.

_Your loyalty is not enough, your duty is not enough, it would never be_. 

Jon sucked in a deep breath and squeezed his eyes shut.

"I almost went down in history -- killed in the secret corridors while walking aimlessly with her killer."

He jolted awake.

"Gods, Dany!"

Jon rose from the chair and went to the bed, sitting to the side. She was pushing herself up and onto the pillows. He helped her by arranging the bedding under her.

"I didn't mean it like that," Dany said, genuinely. "Death emboldens one's disposition for humor."

He shook his head in accord, smiling at each other in what was perhaps a more amicable ambiance. Daenerys' eyes lingered for what it seemed a lifetime before she'd veered off. 

"I'll need your help...to change to lighter clothes," she admitted with embarrassment. 

"Oof-f course!"

He didn't know what that meant until he helped her undress out of her ruined clothes and into a more open and loose -- and revealing evening -- gown. Jon's mind was entangled in the various strands of thought that he was barely aware that for a very brief moment he had Dany in her small clothes in front of him, doing her best to cover herself and him not to look.

Once the ties of her robe were tied, she lay back down.

Jon was left unsure of what to do with his hands or his presence.

"It haunts me," he blurted out, "What I did to you, it haunts me."

"I told you--"

"I've never wanted to hurt you. Gods, Dany. I loved you. I still have feelings for you." He closed his eyes tightly and turned his head to the side. "I did you so wrong--"

"You also gave me the greatest gift of my life," she cut him off, looking for his eyes intensely. She didn't know what prompted her but she spoke from the heart. "There are more scars, they marked my body when Serena grew in me. They were red first and then white." She touched her belly and tried to remember the time she bore their child. The memory cloud with the bitterness and anger she felt back then.

Dany invited Jon to sit next to her. She laid her head on his shoulder. The medicine made her sleepy and she just wanted not to feel sad for a moment.

"If that's all that had to happen for her to be here today--" she stopped herself. Considering it, lifting a hand to his chest and hooking her fingers into the laces of his jerkin.

Jon looked down, her other arm behind him. Lethargic eyes admired the shape of her mouth, her chin, and the skin on her neck and chest.

When her fingers came up to caress his cheek, he moved his other hand to find her chin and make her look at him so he could do what he wanted.

Jon pressed his lips against Dany's and breathed her in. When it seemed they were going to break and their ragged breaths made them shake, he opened his mouth and savored hers. Dany moaned and he took advantage of their parted lips, sinking into her mouth while she raised her hands to hold onto him as he kissed her.

The building of an old sensation startled her out of the haze.

"I can't," Dany broke the kiss to say. I can't kiss and want my own murderer, she told herself. It was wrong. It was...she was mad. 

"It's fine," Jon reassured her. He also felt the sparks of a fire that would spread like wildfire. 

"I cannot be with you," she rapidly said. 

"It's fine. I understand." 

"No, it's not, you don't understand." 

"Dany--" 

"I may never be with you that way again. Or with anyone else," she stared and stared at him without ever blinking away. Serious in her statement. 

"Alright. I am here all the same," he said. 

It sounded so pleasant to the ears but not to the mind and her heart -- they would simply not meet him there.

Daenerys looked at him reluctantly.

"I am just the mother of your child," she whispered. 

He stroked her hair. 

"You are my wife." 

"Your duty." 

Jon regarded her silently. Dany's eyes had widened with sad longing and dismay. It made him want to search every corner of the world for what she longed for.

"What can I do? To prove myself to you."

It wasn't a question he should ask to her but to him, but Jon needed to know if there was something in her feeling that that could make it better for her -- for them. He wanted this, his family with her and their daughter. 

Dany found no words.

She answered softly by shaking her head and laying it above his chest. "Just hold me tight for this night."

That he did. Jon pulled Dany closer and held her like this until he heard her calm breathing from deep sleep. 

"I love you," he whispered, hoping the words would reach her dreams and the innermost part of her mind so she would know this that he has already confessed to her once. 

* * *

Before the last hour of light was over, Serena went to visit Drogon who was still resting on the caves under Red Keep. The years weighed on him and the more he grew, the more difficult it was to move. She could still feel him annoyed and irritated, staring at the Blackwater Bay sky with longing, perhaps wanting to see one of his brothers emerge from the surface. Or maybe she was making it all up in her head and she really was going insane with the Targaryen madness.

She was confused. As she leaned against Drogon's rocky scales and he rocked her with his breaths, she thought once more of Muña. In her Mama. Her heart ached because it didn't want to accept that she was the monster those children remembered, the one who took their mothers, fathers, and siblings' lives in the ardor of her own grief. Would she do the same, being in her place? Serena didn't want to. But the thought of someone hurting theirs, Brown Fox, Vizi, or Muña... _Drogon grunted audibly beneath her_.

Serena raised her head and looked towards the cave entrance where barely any light entered. Her eyes blazed before focusing on the distinctive figure standing there.

Ghost.

The direwolf was not afraid of the dragon. It was Jon's commandos that had kept him away to avoid any incident. Serena wondered what could have brought Ghost here? Were they looking for her?

Serena walked to the entrance and behind her she heard Drogon get up on his talons and growl loudly in warning of his increasing anger. Ghost stood still with his head bowed slightly. It seemed as if were acknowledging the Dragon's might but not fully bowing to it. 

That night she didn't dream of dragons and blood and cries, she dreamed of the icy wind on her face and a starry night broken by a greenish luminescence.

She wasn't flying. She was running. 


End file.
